@ Krogenar: Are you a garmento? lol, early in my career, I used to do arbitrations for fabric manufacturers and buyers here in NYC.
No, but I do work very close to the fashion district. I make custom banners and flags, so I use a lot of nylon. Arbitrations between fabric buyers and sellers? Hope they paid you a lot, LOL! ("This isn't Navy Blue, it's Black!") You have no idea how many times that color trips people up.
@Matt3o: It seems like Signature Plastics can produce the same color over and over again in their ABS plastic on a reliable basis. So I'm hoping they can reproduce the turquoise color that they produced before. And I think it's just a coincidence that their turquoise color is almost an exact match for Tiffany Blue.
It didn't look like an exact match to me; in fact, it was pretty far off. But color is such a subjective thing that it might be good enough for the end user. The only way to get a 100% match would be to match a chip up against a Tiffany bag. And even then, the final color might be slightly different because SP would mix the color up fresh for production. When I used to silkscreen in-house we would run into the same problem. I'd mix a color up by hand (literally mixing it by adding ink, checking against a color, remixing, etc.) and after printing I'd put the ink in one of those chinese take-out containers, label it, and then if the client came back I would at least have a reference to try to match.
But I don't think that would work with molten plastic!
Well, I worked for somebody else. It was my first real job, and I didn't get paid very well, but I learned a lot about litigation, and how people in the garment industry try to cheat each other. It's a pretty crazy business, is all I'm willing to say. However, there are a lot of really great people in that industry too. There are even a few honest ones.
As or SP's turquoise keycaps, it's true they are not an exact match for Tiffany Blue. But I didn't think about trying to get an exact match, mainly b/c it seemed impracticable, and secondarily since it seemed that a slightly different, but very similar shade of turquoise would avoid copyright litigation. I'm sure you're aware of Christian Louboutin's copyright litigation over his red soles on his women's shoes. Louboutin has re-filed his French trademark to name a specific shade of red (Pantone 18-1663TP, “Chinese Red”) rather than the color red in general — so his claim to copyright protection seems to be limited to that exact shade of red, i.e., Pantone 18-1663TP. The same is probably true for Tiffany Blue, but again, it's always an open legal question when dealing with this sort of thing. Louboutin lost at the trial court level, but has won at the appellate court level. So, while it may be an interesting hypothetical, to see if one can duplicate Tiffany Blue in plastic, it may cause more problems than it's worth, if one actually tried to sell it. However, despite the foregoing, I would love to know the exact Panatone color name and number for Tiffany Blue, if you can figure it out.