united-states, legal, trademarkI would like to use the word “Youtuber” in my branding. I am wondering if this could cause any legal issues?
The word is not used by youtube in their own branding, but is widely used in popular culture.
I was able to find this document https://developers.google.com/youtube/branding_guidelines. The word “youtuber” is not mentioned, but it does have a section on using variants such as “YT”.
Does anyone have experience or advice on this matter?
I wouldn’t.
From the document you linked,
Important: You must never use the YouTube name or any abbreviation, acronym, or variant of the word YouTube, such as YT or You-Tube in conjunction with the overall name of your application.
Emphasis mine. As you said, “YT” is given as an example, but only as an example. There are dozens of variations you could use that would infringe their trademark, and I’d heavily guess that “Youtuber” would count.
Protection by trademarks is kind of a funky deal. I don’t know how much of this you already know going in, but at a high level, trademarks are used to protect consumers. Unlike some other forms of intellectual property protection, which focus on the protection of inventors or artists, trademarks’ main purposes are to stop people from being confused about where a product is coming from.
One of many standard examples that I tend to cite is if a high-end restaurant opened with the name “McDonald’s.” People would go there expecting very cheap food and be disappointed, and people would go to the fast-food restaurant expecting very high-end food and be disappointed. That’s what trademarks are meant to protect: for better or worse, they give consumers a hint about what they should expect from a business.
Now, as we all know, “confusion” is a pretty subjective thing. And just like pretty well any division of the law, nobody can really claim to be the definitive source of whether the courts will uphold something. That’s why I say “I’d heavily guess” it would count. It’s hard to say what Google, the courts, or consumers would think.
But looking at the name “Youtuber,” and knowing how people sometimes are, I’d expect a fair number of people would think it came directly from YouTube, and therefor you could get in trouble for using it.
From a more logical (in the academic sense of the word) perspective, if your name contains the word “Youtuber,” it will also contain the word “YouTube.” Given “you must never use the YouTube name…in conjunction with the overall name…,” that would be a pretty direct infringement.
I suppose it should be noted that, once in force, the standard for proving infringement of a trademark is a little higher. Google would have to seek you out and actively prove to courts that people were confused by your use of their name. All these hypotheticals are more or less irrelevant. But in reality, again, if you have a direct copy of their distinctive trademark in your name, that’s unlikely to be too difficult.
And in any event, it’s unlikely that they’d allow you in the Google Play store with that name. So take that how you will.
The only way I can really imagine if you held a stake would be if you were already using the name YouTuber before they started using their trademark.
It’s true that heavy use in pop-culture could be a factor to invalidating their hold on it, but just as Google still manages to hold their primary trademark in light of many people saying “I’ll Google that,” it’s unlikely that they’ll let go of YouTube that easily, or this early. Note, as well, that if Google starts to “let things slide” in this arena, that will also be a factor in their loss of the trademark. So it’s unlikely that they’ll take the non-enforcement route if they learn about it.
But realistically, it all just depends on likelihood of confusion, and how you intend to use it. If it’s in your name, I wouldn’t. If you just want to mention “Founded by a YouTuber” in some text, that might be okay. It all depends.
It depends on what you plan to do and where you plan to do it. If you will be outside of the US and EU, you can probably setup a website using that name, provided that its not the main part of the website.
If you are only setting up a blog and plan to host small advertisements on it, that will probably not cause an issue.
The problems you run into are if you try to significantly profit from a trademarked name by selling merchandise/using the existing logo or if you try to defame the company that has the trademark.
You should be aware that Google will lower you in search results since links to your site will not be authenticated with any actual YouTube/Google site.
Lastly, this should not discourage you from using a trademarked name within your site if you are clear that you are using that company’s product and want to highlight you are using it. For this case, you can say “for all the YouTubers out there, check out my videos…” and then post an image of the YouTube logo. This way you are not trying to imply that a YouTuber is someone watching your videos, but its someone watching your videos though YouTubes site.
Don’t be a slave to youtube. Be your own brand. I would say this is a tm infringement but the. com has been taken and is deved. Could be owned by yt? Didn’t check.
Ive always wondered why some vloggers call themselves youtubers, thus restricting themselves and brand to the channel. I know a pair of famous vloggers that brand on a site too, so do their vlogger family and friends.
I understand youtubers are not all vloggers but remember there are platforms from yahoo etc soon competing with yt.
But if you want to tm something i would seriously consider the .com and include that in your startup costings. If it’s a premium that would cost over $50,000++ could look into premium .io
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