Trademarking #Hashtags – a Fad or a Wave of the Future?

As Twitter took the world by storm, so did the hashtag. Most of you know that hashtags are a way of organizing your Tweets for search engines. What you may not know is that trademarking hashtags has become the latest trend in intellectual property strategies.

In the last year, almost 200 hashtag trademark applications have been filed. However, the USPTO has not yet granted a trademark to a hashtag. Some filings have been challenged as being “merely descriptive” of the services or products they represent. For example, the trademark filing #HASHTAG was rejected because it was not distinctive enough to convey that the mark represented “advertising and media services.” Although some have been rejected, certain hashtags may be protectable as an expression of an idea that is used to promote a brand, service, or product.

If you are considering filing a hashtag trademark the question to ask is, what is the value? For the most part, ownership of a hashtag will not prevent people from using it on social media, nor will it force those sites to take down tweets or posts by users who “infringe” on your hashtag (unless someone is deliberately causing confusion with your brand name or registered marks). Though many lawyers are happy to file these trademarks for you without question, why spend money to trademark something that may have no value?

In our opinion, the real value in protecting hashtags may be to prevent your competitors from using your taglines or slogans in their social media campaigns. More and more brands are using hashtags as a marketing tactic to share campaign messages with their audiences and spark forum-like discussions. We will continue to monitor the developments in this unchartered area of intellectual property at #digitallawgroup.

Digital Law Group can help you determine if you have a hashtag or other name that should be trademarked, as well as handle your USPTO and WIPO trademark filings.

Contact Digital Law Group to schedule your free consultation to discuss your legal requirements and how we can best assist you.