They can and do charge for products related to actually making the colors. That doesn't mean they should get paid for which RGB code looks close.
And the idea of copyrighting colors is ridiculous.
And the idea of copyrighting colors is ridiculous.
Absolutely, however at least here in the UK (and I suspect the EU), copying the Pantone colour book would be classed as copying a “database”. Databases are copyrightable, whether you agree with that or not.
My argument is rather than doing something that drags the copyright debate into to situation just make something better and “free as in beer and speech”.
Copying something that is “copyright” to “free it” puts you on the back foot. You will loos the argument eventually.
And you could still install individual colors in that case, right? The average project shouldn't have many.
It does seem like Adobe could have mapped the colors in existing files to a useful hex code instead of blacking them all out.
They don’t copyright the color. The copyright the product associated with the color.
You can use the same RGB or CMYK colors. You however don’t get the guarantees of what the spectral responses of that color are and you don’t get the guarantees of printers having palettes to match the color.
I can tell a printer to color match a pantone swatch without violating anything.