Colour palettes are collections of facts. Facts don’t have copyright protection and ability to claim copyright for a collection is pretty tenuous. However, copyright may apply to certain related things.
For example: Suppose you see that someone is selling a Photoshop colour palette for money, and included the entire palette in the store image. In that case, there’s literally nothing, legally speaking, stopping someone from prodding the image with a colour picker a bunch of times. But there would be copyright protection for the Photoshop palette file itself, because that’s a more tangible piece of data.
There are also other kinds of intellectual property laws that apply to colours. Pantone gets away with whatever shenanigans they’re doing because of trademarks.
Designer here - this above comment is 100% correct. The nuance is important that if a particular color palette is used in an original and distinguishable artwork that can be subject to copyright, although it’s a gray area. Colors can be trademarked however and that’s done all the time; for example McDs Red and yellow, UPS brown, The yellow of 3Ms stickies, DHLs red and yellow are examples. Those colors are only contestable if you use them on a similar product. You can color your dog house UPS brown without issue, but you wouldn’t get away with (for long) creating a delivery company with vans that color brown.
Colour palettes are collections of facts. Facts don’t have copyright protection and ability to claim copyright for a collection is pretty tenuous. However, copyright may apply to certain related things.
For example: Suppose you see that someone is selling a Photoshop colour palette for money, and included the entire palette in the store image. In that case, there’s literally nothing, legally speaking, stopping someone from prodding the image with a colour picker a bunch of times. But there would be copyright protection for the Photoshop palette file itself, because that’s a more tangible piece of data.
There are also other kinds of intellectual property laws that apply to colours. Pantone gets away with whatever shenanigans they’re doing because of trademarks.
Designer here - this above comment is 100% correct. The nuance is important that if a particular color palette is used in an original and distinguishable artwork that can be subject to copyright, although it’s a gray area. Colors can be trademarked however and that’s done all the time; for example McDs Red and yellow, UPS brown, The yellow of 3Ms stickies, DHLs red and yellow are examples. Those colors are only contestable if you use them on a similar product. You can color your dog house UPS brown without issue, but you wouldn’t get away with (for long) creating a delivery company with vans that color brown.