In what was meant to be a move to honor the late Justice Antonin Scalia, George Mason University announced that it would be renaming its law school to “The Antonin Scalia School of Law at George Mason University.” Unfortunately for the school, not much thought was given to the social media implications of such a name.
Almost immediately, the hashtag #ASSLaw began trending on Twitter, which makes one wonder whether or not anyone actually checked to see what the school acronym would be. It doesn’t seem like that was the case, and as a result #ASSLaw was born. Although it would have been interesting to see what the school could have done with its future marketing campaigns, it announced that in order to avoid any “acronym confusion,” it would be tweaking its name to “The Antonin Scalia Law School.”
Which brings me to the point of this post. Whether we like it or not, hashtags have become a part of our everyday lives, especially for those who are marketing their businesses. They allow you to target specific customers who are interested in a particular hashtag, or come up with an entirely unique hashtag to stand out. This leads us to a very important question:
CAN YOU TRADEMARK A HASHTAG?
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) will treat a hashtag the same way as it treats any other trademark application. If your hashtag functions as an identifier for the source of your goods or services, registration may be possible. The USPTO will also look to see if there are any similar marks out here that would lead to a likelihood of confusion between your mark and other registered or pending marks.
All in all, there has been a drastic increase in the amount of trademark applications submitted which feature a hashtag. A graph published by Thomson Reuters shows the increase of these types of applications through 2015:
In 2010, only five trademark applications for hashtags were granted. Fast forward to the end of 2015, and there have been 1,042 applications for trademarks with hashtags submitted in the United States.
USING A “TRADEMARKED” HASHTAG
Does this mean that you can run into trouble using a hashtag that is a registered trademark? That depends on how you use it. Typically, companies will actually encourage the use of its hashtags throughout social media as it promotes brand awareness. Where issues may arise is when a competitor is trying to tap into another’s audience and uses the protected mark to generate traffic to its own product or service.
