Hashtags and Trademark:

In today’s era, in the emerging trend of social media in society, the hashtag or label ‘#’ has become a widely used symbol. A hashtag is generally a symbol or label for any content. It specifically helps those interested in a particular topic and, using this hashtag, quickly find the content on the same topic. It is used primarily on social media sites like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook etc., for sharing content on a relevant matter by adding this hashtag label to their stories or messages. Today, as social media is serving as an eminent marketing platform for small or big business enterprises to attract customers or consumers for their goods and services, these hashtags or label has emerged as one of the most exciting and innovative marketing tools attached to the trademark on all social media like #MarathonBombing or #mcdstories or like Nike uses hashtags for its new products as #justdoit and like many more to provide uniqueness to their trademark.

The primary purpose of using a trademark for any business is to define the source of origin of its goods and services to the general public. These trademarks gain so much goodwill and reputation in the market that one or the other competitors can easily be prevented from using that trademark. Similarly, in considering a hashtag as a trademark under the Trademark law of India, it must qualify certain requirements like (a) it should be capable of being represented graphically or (b) it should be unique or distinctive in the terms that it should be capable of distinguishing goods and services of one provider from those of another.

From the first point of view of being represented graphically hashtag completely satisfies this requirement as the label “#” can well be represented graphically. From the second point of view that it should be unique or has some distinctive feature which should be capable of distinguishing goods and services one from another; for this, various businesses use hashtags along with their trademarks to gain distinctive feature. Like any other mark under the trademark law, this hashtag trademark also requires legal protection in case anyone tries to gain undue advantage or benefits from someone’s innovative or creative efforts.