The small blue bird adorning nearly every company’s social media section. The verbiage “tweet” and “retweet” working their way into the fabric of modern language. The creation of character-limited, short-form posts as a new...more
How would you pronounce #law? Is it “hashtag law,” as the PTO examiner suggested would be the most common understanding, or “pound law,” as alleged by the unsuccessful registrant of #law as a service mark. And to what does it...more
When the first social media hashtag was used in 2007, users had no idea how ubiquitous hashtags would become. Today, hashtags are an essential part of our lives (and a subject we’ve been writing about for years). From...more
William Adams is a musical performer who is more famously known by his stage name, will.i.am. A recent ruling from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, unfortunately makes him a...more
Since our previous article on the emerging issue of trademark rights in hashtags, the use of hashtags in social media marketing has continued to grow. Described as the “ignition keys to a social media keyword search,”...more
We have previously discussed how the use of the hashtag in trademarks is continuously evolving. As it turns out, the latest evolutionary wrinkle might have started to form this past March, thanks to one of pop culture’s more...more
Brand owners have embraced hashtags (words or phrases preceded by a hash or pound sign - #) as a way to both engage consumers and track social media posts regarding a specific product or topic. Not surprisingly, the...more
Hashtags have become ubiquitous in social media, but their status as intellectual property—particularly as trademarks—is still developing. First adopted by Twitter users to link user posts, hashtags are character strings...more