General Mills spent the last two years trying to trademark the use of yellow on Cheerios’ boxes. But their efforts came up short. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board essentially said customers are used to seeing many different cereal brands use yellow, so the color was ornamentation as opposed to a unique brand indicator.

You may be wondering, what’s the point? General Mill’s goal with the trademark effort was to try to own this color in the breakfast space for the Cheerios brand. But is trademarking a color really a worthwhile effort? Perhaps companies would be better off using the money to more distinctly define the brand (and imprint the color) through their marketing.