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Nov 09, 2015
Charlotte Urman , Inlex IP Expertise, France
Manon Alexandre, Inlex IP Expertise, France

#trademark or #nottrademark?


Charlotte Urman , Inlex IP Expertise, France, Manon Alexandre, Inlex IP Expertise, FranceThe symbol hashtag # exists from a long time, but in 2007, Twitter created a trend whereby all words are preceded with the #. This idea appeared in order to connect publications with thematic. Thereafter, this trend has evolved and now this sign is used to introduce or develop messages on Twitter. This symbol became very popular and has exceeded the Twitter’s scope.
For now, this sign is used by a lot of people, in different contexts and some of the # names became very famous (i.e. #RWC2015 for the Rugby World Cup).
In today’s society, people that invest in this kind of symbol for commercial promotion often intend to get a monopoly. The legal question then arises of which protection can be granted to a hashtag “#” as a trademark. This problematic, which is present all over the world, also came out in front of the French jurisdictions.
Indeed, in a decision of December 5th, 2014, the Paris Appeal Court had to compare two trademarks ‘Cloud 9’ and  read more