How Does One Company Own Color?

Let's look into the mystery of the Pantone company. How did they come to own the concept of color, and what makes them the authority so many designers look to? Pantone started out as a printing company in the 1950s, in the world of design in which no one could agree on colors, the same way it had been for hundreds of years. But the world was going global. Pantone's secret is the system, first coding colors by percentage of inks, then later by digitizing color formulas. The Pantone Matching System brought standardization to color, making matching easier for everyone. And since the Pantone name preceded each code, the name became dominant. Phil Edwards explains this in much more detail. (via Digg)