Revisiting Hashtag Trademarks After Ten Years: From Sextiles and Octothorpes to #Metalepsis

From a legal perspective the issue of hashtag trademarks is now a little more than a decade old. It has lost a bit of the excitement it had just five years ago, but it still bears indicia of being a valuable legal and commercial tool. This article attempts to demonstrate why, if deployed correctly, traditional trademark laws and procedures—with only minor modifications—are up to the legal task of registering and enforcing investments in hashtag trademarks on par with other common types of trademarks. In an attempt to answer the question why trademark a hashtag, this article explores the history of hashtag trademarks, the history of the hashtag and then how hashtags use a rhetorical technique called narrative metalepsis (#what?) to help authenticate customer engagements and build brand loyalty with particular goods and services, on and off social media.

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