What are the Remedies for Trademark Infringement on Social Media in the UK and the US

Abstract

Trade mark infringement has a very long history. However, the emergence of the internet in the past few decades and lately the emergence of the social media has brought a new dimension to it. What follows is the infringement of different kinds of goods and services on social media by individuals and companies who do so knowingly or unknowingly. This dissertation explored this practice in the U.K. and the U.S. Secondary data was used to understand the scale of this problem and the different ways different products and services are infringed upon by internet users in both countries. It found that the practice takes different forms, such as social media users openly posting photos of items for sale on different social media sites which are sometimes shared with friends or followers in both the U.K. and the U.S. However, there are violators who did this on closed groups. This dissertation found that in both countries, authorities have often used existing laws to address the problem and when existing laws were insufficient, some new laws or policies have been enacted where possible. Further, many cases have gone to court, creating a room for case laws which are also widely used to address this problem. Social media sites have also made policies with the purpose of addressing these problems, such as the suspension of infringers or their removal from the site following repeated infringements. These sites also have some policies, such as ‘cease and desist’ amongst other policies used to tackle this problem. The dissertation recommended how the problem can be adequately addressed considering the existing loopholes.