“You may have heard that Apple’s considering unveiling a gold-colored iPhone early next month,” Brian Fung reports for The Washington Post. “Well, so have a bunch of irate Frenchmen, it turns out.”
“The problem isn’t that the iPhone will be gold, per se. Rather, it’s that the device could be called a light shade of ‘champagne,'” Fung reports. “And now a trade association for French wines is preemptively warning Apple against doing so.”
Fung reports, “‘We can’t say that a ‘champagne’ colour exists,’ said Charles Goamaere, legal director for the Interprofessional Committee for Champagne Wine, in an interview with French media this week. Therefore, any company wanting to use the name ‘Champagne’ would be doing so [only] to attract all the benefits that surround [the label.]’ Goamere’s trade group is among the biggest defenders of the champagne brand. If you’re a sparkling wine producer located outside of the Champagne region of France, you have to call your beverage something else.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s a color, not a drink or foodstuff.
If there’s still an issue, Apple should buy the rights to use “Champagne,” then license it back to the French sparkling wine producers of the Champagne region with a perpetual, exclusive license.
And isn’t “a bunch of irate Frenchmen” superfluous?*
*Just kidding: We love the French (mostly)!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward W.” for the heads up.]
Champagne / #fad6a5 hex color
Of even more interest…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champagne_%28color%29
It’s gonna be pretty difficult to assert ownership of the word “champagne” when it has been used as a color name for almost a hundred years.
And I am shocked – shocked! – to find yet another group of cranks riding Apple’s coattails for free publicity.
Note that PANTONE lists “Champagne Beige 14-1012 TCX” and “Pink Champagne 12-1107 TPX”
To the barricades! Allons enfants de la Patrie…
This sounds like typical nonsense where anglophones invent a story with which to bash the French.
There have been Champagne gold amplifiers and receivers for years from the likes of Marantz and others.
Total twaddle. Move along.
Just wait until they find out about the Burgundy iPhone.
“If you’re a sparkling wine producer located outside of the Champagne region of France, you have to call your beverage something else.”
Absolutely not true. Apple is a U.S. company. They can call it whatever they want.
A bit of background: Back in the 1920s the French got virtually every country to agree that no alcohol made like “Champagne” could be called “Champagne” unless it was produced in that specific region of France. Guess what? The U.S. did not sign. Why? Prohibition. It was unconstitutional for anyone to do “Champagne” so why would the U.S. have to sign up to such a thing. When prohibition was repealed the U.S. still didn’t sign.
“Champagne” is an unrestricted name in the U.S.
If Apple wants to call that color “champagne” then it is free to do so! The French snobs need to remember history and just shut up over this!
It was a treaty signed in Paris in 1912. Even Champagne Switzerland, a town which dates to 1100 AD, cannot use the name Champagne on their wines.
In 2003 the US Congress, in response to France’s opposition to the Iraq war, renamed French Fries in their cafeteria to “Freedom Fries”.
Maybe Apple should rename the Champaign iPhones to “Freedom Phones”.
Of course that would be ironic, being they’re assembled in China.
Was the ‘Thunderbird’ label taken?
This is from the Onion right?
Champagne is a region in France. It’s where the best sparkling wine in the world is produced. It is not a color. And it should not be used to describe an iPhone.
“Best” I believe that’s just your opinion, friend…
The color of a smartphone has nothing to do with the beverage. If you are that dumb you have no business making the beverage or buying a smartphone. They can call it gold if they want but to make a big stink about it is absurd!
metallic beige 😉
Apple never pretended to call it “Champagne”… not even talked about the color “champagne”.
Bronze iPhone would fit to the model as well.
Puleeeze. Where were these snobs when the grape iMac was announced? Why didn’t they protest Apple’s use of that color?
You just don’t understand what this is all about.
The French should jump on this as a marketing opportunity. Imagine a full page ad with a champagne iPhone pictured next to a bottle of champagne with the caption;
Celebrate your new iPhone with a bottle of the best!!
Of course this is just an advertisement for Champagne Wines. Would even consider taking a glass of Champagne after buying my next champagne colored iPhone.
But, oh Canadians, beware of the French, will they have to change their street names of their Champagne Avenue and Champagne Drive? Sure not 🙂
And we’re taking something a Frenchman says seriously because???
MDN, interesting take. However, I think that Apple should simply buy up the entire Champagne region of France, with the hope of establishing some kind of civilization there.
So call it champain.
Red wine is still called red wine, and there are an infinite number of shades of red. Next.
Too bad that far too many posters here get their history lessons from pop culture.
You can be anything you want on the internet so why do so many people choose to be willfully ignorant?
ribbit
If only they were so stalwart in defending themselves against the Germans. Instead, it was “Welcome to Paris,” and “Let us tell you where our Jews are…”