PENGUIN
Penguin Books has been registered in the UK since Allen Lane founded the imprint in 1935 with the revolutionary idea of selling quality paperbacks for sixpence — the price of a packet of cigarettes. The Penguin logo and the distinctive colour-coded cover designs became icons of twentieth-century British publishing.
UK IPO Record
- Application Number
- UK00003597044
- Word Mark
- PENGUIN
- Status
- Registered
- Applied
- 18 February 2021
- Registered
- 25 June 2021
- Next Renewal
- 18 February 2031
- Owner
- PLADIS (UK) LIMITED
- Nice Classes
- Class 30
Brand History & Trademark Analysis
Penguin Books has been registered in the UK since Allen Lane founded the imprint in 1935 with the revolutionary idea of selling quality paperbacks for sixpence — the price of a packet of cigarettes. The Penguin logo and the distinctive colour-coded cover designs became icons of twentieth-century British publishing. The mark has been maintained through the merger with Random House in 2013.
The mark has been maintained through the merger with Random House in 2013.
Nice Class 16 covers paper & printed matter. View all Class 16 trademarks and case studies →
Historical Background
Allen Lane founded Penguin Books as a division of The Bodley Head on 30 July 1935. The penguin mascot was drawn by Edward Young, who was also the first production manager. The colour-coding system — orange for fiction, blue for biography, green for crime — was a deliberate brand architecture decision registered alongside the penguin device. The 1961 trial of Penguin Books under the Obscene Publications Act 1959, for publishing Lady Chatterley's Lover, remains one of the most consequential legal cases involving a publisher's brand in British history.