TikToks and Trademarking
A trademark is a mark used to represent either goods or services. This mark can be a word, phrase, symbol, design, or combination. Using a trademark protects you and your business, making it so that the mark or marks you use to stand out from the crowd can’t be stolen and used by competing companies. The most important part of a trademark is the registration of it, as protection doesn’t kick in until the brand has been registered and accepted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Once you’ve registered your trademark and gained protection, you can feel more comfortable and confident putting your business out in the world. So let’s talk about TikToks and trademarking.
Social Media
One of the biggest social media platforms to consider putting your brand content on these days is TikTok. It’s no secret that people spend less time and attention on advertisements, have little patience, and prefer casual browsing. Between audience attention spans and the appearance of ‘skip ad’ buttons, the best marketing strategies these days focus on short, interesting video ads. TikTok is the perfect place for advertisements like these, as its main purpose is to be a platform used to create and share short videos. Since its launch in 2016, originally as a company named ‘Douyin’, TikTok has become massively popular. In 2022 alone, TikTok’s application has been downloaded over 571 million times.
Many businesses – large and small – are taking advantage of the booming popularity of TikTok by launching profiles on the platform or utilizing TikTok influencers as promoters. There’s a reason huge names like Coca-Cola and Red Bull focus much of their social media advertising on TikTok. With an attractive platform that allows the mostly younger demographic to enjoy bite-sized content, TikTok is the obvious choice for marketing your brand.
The problem with the growing popularity and use of TikTok is, of course, the increased risk to your brand’s protection. It’s not rare to find accounts on TikTok that are imposters pretending to be the official account representing a brand. Sometimes these profiles are even the top profile, becoming more popular than the official brand’s profile. Thankfully TikTok has added a verification process that authenticates accounts, but this is tricky and has specific stipulations that need to be followed.
Trademarking
Thankfully, TikTok has a trademark infringement policy that works to protect its users. Any company that uses TikTok should familiarize themselves with this policy to ensure they understand what qualifies as infringement, how to look out for it, and how to report it.
TikTok will work with you to protect your brand if you have registered your trademark and are legally entitled to the protection. Their policy aligns with trademark law; therefore, registering your trademark is vital. With this in mind, TikTok does protect its users when they use a trademark to reference, comment, criticize, review, or make a parody of the brand, its products, or its services. Fan pages are also allowed, as long as they are open about being a fan page and don’t claim to represent the brand in any way.
Depending on the severity and the number of trademark violations, content may be removed, and accounts may be suspended or even terminated. TikTok suggests companies reach out to violators first to see if they can resolve issues, but if necessary, they are willing and able to intervene. The first step in the intervention process is filing a trademark infringement report with TikTok. The filer should include all possibly helpful information on the report form.