The great IP of Pantone

The other day when talking about Pantone's refusal to work wit FOSS software I was quite Spartan (pun intended) and my post generated some confusion: there is no need to reverse engineer the Pantone® Matching System®, the core of their "Intellectual Property" is basically a spreadsheet: 3 columns representing color values in Re, Green and Blue and a fourth with the color name, something like this:

You use those values to be sure the printed colors look like you intended and usually pass the info to the printing shop: the color here is PMS-xxx and the color there is PMS-yyy, so you are sure they match the sample (a physical color swatch) you showed to your customer.

The spreadsheet above is all an software application needs but can be used only under some draconian restrictions (and big $$$).