DOES AN ARTIST HAVE AN ENFORCEABLE EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO THE ARTISTIC USE OF A COLOR? This article on the Gizmodo website by Alex Cranz from December 27, 2016 describes in more detail the war over the rights to the artistic use of Vantablack. It may seem strange that an artist can claim exclusive rights to a color. The claim seems to be the stuff of which law school hypotheticals are made. There may not be any precedents for it. The justification for the exclusivity is set forth in the Cranz article: Vantablack “requires specialist application to achieve its aesthetic effect. In addition, the coating’s performance beyond the visible spectrum results in it being classified as a dual-use material that is subject to UK Export Control.”
An artist who took issue with the exclusivity announced that he had developed The World’s Pinkest Pink which features the following disclaimer: “we’re not actually sure if this is the worlds pinkest pink ever, it could well be! It’s the pinkest we could come up with, and we’ve not seen anything pinker.”
It has been suggested that the warfare over the rights to Vantablack is itself a work of conceptual art.