Within the past several years, hashtags have become one of the\u00a0most popular means of organizing content on social media. The\u00a0experimental categorical tool is rampant in our society because it\u00a0allows consumers to connect with and engage other social media\u00a0users based on a common interest, theme, or topic. Brands started\u00a0using trademarks in hashtags and even trademarking hashtags\u00a0themselves to encourage users to talk about their products.\u00a0Incidentally, these hashtags were used by competitors, which has\u00a0lead to hashtag trademark infringement claims. The United States\u00a0Patent and Trademark Office recognizes a hashtag can serve as,\u00a0and be registered as, a trademark. However, a federal district\u00a0court in Eksouzian v. Albanese determined a hashtag is not a\u00a0trademark. This Recent Development argues that because of the\u00a0inherent nature of social media and the way consumers understand\u00a0how it operates, hashtags should not be afforded legal trademark\u00a0protection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Within the past several years, hashtags have become one of the\u00a0most popular means of organizing content on social media. The\u00a0experimental categorical tool is rampant in our society because it\u00a0allows consumers to connect with and engage other social media\u00a0users based on a common interest, theme, or topic. Brands started\u00a0using trademarks in hashtags and even trademarking hashtags\u00a0themselves …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,68,71],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3853"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7255,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3853\/revisions\/7255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}