SNS and intellectual property

　With the development of SNS such as X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Youtube, and TikTok, it has become possible to send out information and communicate with others using various tools. There are many situations where SNS is used for business purposes beyond personal use.
　Since SNS is a service that uses the Internet, it is easy to connect with the world. Conversely, being able to easily connect with the world can also mean that there is a possibility of some kind of conflict occurring with others. So, in the age of SNS, are there any things we need to be careful about regarding intellectual property?

Register your channel name as a trademark!
　To conclude, channel names and account names displayed on SNS may function as trademarks, so we recommend that you register them as trademarks.

　An example of a dispute over a channel name is the case of ``Yukkuri Farce.'' Many of you may be familiar with this example, as it has often been featured on internet news. Let me briefly explain the background of the incident.

"Yukkuri Farce" refers to a video genre (there are "Yukkuri Commentary", "Yukkuri Video", etc.) created using voice synthesis software in which Touhou Project's derivative characters speak slowly and without intonation, and has been used for a long time on video posting sites (with regard to copyright, it has been used without the copyright infringement or warning). At that time, a completely unrelated third party registered a trademark for "Slow Farce." This caused a huge uproar among users of the video posting site. Currently, the trademark registration for "Slowly Farce" has become invalid and the situation has calmed down.

https://www.j-platpat.inpit.go.jp/c1800/TR/JP-2021-114070/F3A3517B2BE17F2B5A64398A955EDC9F885A39A3B583EC06 8237E35E0537F034/40/ja

　Although the name was implicitly free from copyright, they did not go so far as to obtain trademark rights, and an unrelated third party filed an application, almost making the name unusable. .

　Another example of a dispute over a channel name is "Kuma Cooking."
https://www.youtube.com/@kuma_cooking

　This is a case in which a third party who has no relation to the owner of this channel, "Kumako", applied to register "Kuma Cooking" as a trademark, and the registration was approved.

https://www.j-platpat.inpit.go.jp/c1800/TR/JP-2020-123168/83726C9BA59956A534EA7106 A37BCD4628873C3E3ED82007D92233F7FA258A22/40/ja

　In the end, the registration fee was not paid for this registration decision and the application was rejected.
Kuma Cooking has a certain number of registrants, so I wonder what kind of examination the Patent Office is doing! Some people were angry about this, but as I have explained many times before, trademark registration will be granted to the first person to file an application on a first-come, first-served basis. Even if there is an example of a name being clearly used, unless it is a well-known fact that the name is a trademark of that person, it will be registered (it needs to be widely known to the public, and being famous only in the internet community is often not enough). Of course, if the trademark has been plagiarized, it is possible to get the trademark back by proving that it has been plagiarized, but there are many cases where there is insufficient evidence and proof is incomplete. In this case, you will no longer be able to use that name and will have no choice but to change the channel name. If the channel name is registered while the number of subscribers is increasing, perhaps the person inside has changed? This may cause the viewer to misunderstand that the content has changed. To prevent such situations, if you want to continue using the channel name you came up with without changing it, we recommend that you obtain trademark rights.

　In addition to the above, as actual registration examples, there is the VTuber name No. 6652173 "Hoshimachi Suisei" and the Youtube channel registration name No. 6363944 "Mixed Race Boyfriend."

https://www.j-platpat.inpit.go.jp/c1801/TR/JP-2022-070448/40/ja
https://hololive.hololivepro.com/talents/hoshimachi-suisei/


https://www.j-platpat.inpit.go.jp/c1801/TR/JP-2020-005976/40/ja

https://www.youtube.com/@karekoreya

AUTHOR

Takefumi SUGIURA （杉浦 健文）

EVORIX Intellectual Property Law Firm　Managing Patent Attorney

Supports clients across IT, manufacturing, startups, fashion, and medical industries, covering patent, trademark, design, and copyright filings through trials and infringement litigation. Specialized in IP strategy for AI, IoT, Web3, and FinTech. Member of the Japan Patent Attorneys Association (JPAA), Asian Patent Attorneys Association (APAA), and Japan Trademark Association (JTA).

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