So, last night, as I pondered yet more excuses to not write on this blog I haven't touched in almost two months, a friend of mine enlightened me to a series of tweets (Yes, I do have a Twitter) that lead me to what I can call both the funniest and stupidest thing I have seen in quite a long time.
Ok, quick recap, since late June I have been in a burg called Edmond, Oklahoma, basically waiting for school to start back up (5 more days!). Edmond is the home to UCO, my undergraduate alma mater, and a rather affluent suburb of the greater OKC metro area, dominating the city's north side.
Edmond also has a certain, if not stereotypical, reputation of being full of yuppie, nouveau rich dinglehoppers who treat the area as the Beverly Hills of the high plains, though Edmond as a whole comes nowhere close to that level of class elitism and opulence.
Enter Edmond Active. A local arts, culture and events magazine started in 2009, Edmond Active has always been a bit of a niche, local magazine serving the residents of Edmond, and not much else.
Fast forward to 2011, the year I began at UCO. Edmond Active filed (and received) a trademark from the Oklahoma Secretary of State for the hashtag #shopedmond. An unusual move for such a small, niche publication in my opinion, but not at all a wrong one. Companies trademark brand identifications like hashtags all the time for advertising or marketing purposes.
Fast forward to August 4, 2016, when this popped up on Edmond Active's Twitter account.
That is when the collective OKC Twittersphere (is that still a word?) proceeded to lose their bloody minds. Viral backlash against this stance on the #shopedmond hashtag has been overwhelmingly negative to Edmond Active, and ridiculed almost to a fault in ways that I usually only find on a 4chan ethical debate.
As much as I enjoy flaming businesses anonymously on the Internet for doing patently stupid things, let's step back and take a look at this, shall we?
First off, between blocking the reporter who wrote the article describing the backlash from reading their Twitter, to the legions of people making funny yet unwarranted jokes at the expense of that aforementioned Edmond stereotype, nobody wading in to this shit show smells like roses.
Secondly, Edmond Active clearly does not understand how trademarks work.
In 2013, the United States Patent and Trademark Office determined that a hashtag could be registered as a trademark, but "only if it functions as an identifier of the source of the applicant's goods or services." (TMEP §1202.18)
Despite my grand amount of zero legal expertise, I can't say this passes the sniff test to me in this instance.
As presented here, Edmond Active holds #shopedmond out not as an identifier of their goods or services, but as a marketing tool for the exclusive use of people and groups already buying their services as advertisers. On a federal level, unless I am not interpreting this correctly, this trademark would be invalid. Whether Oklahoma law differs from this or not, I don't know, but if it does, one would think that my old friend, the Supremacy Clause, would come in to play.
This interpretation of hashtags as a trademarkable brand has been challenged in court, notably in Ekzousian v. Albanese, leaving the ability to enforce a trademark on a hashtag murky at best, and it should be noted that Edmond Active's trademark of #shopedmond is state-level only. Getting in to hashtag trademarking by business is kind of a risky move. Edmond Active is learning the hard way that it is next to impossible to police and enforce a trademark on a hashtag, especially in the hands of an angry, childish Internet culture.