Green is the color Playtex Products Inc. executives are seeing now that a federal judge in Delaware has ruled the company’s sweet-smelling, colorized sunblocks don’t infringe on rival Schering-Plough’s patented suntan lotions.

U.S. District Judge Roderick McKelvie concluded May 17 that Schering’s patent on the formula for colored sunblocks that vanish when they are applied to the skin isn’t valid because the concept isn’t new or novel.