Does the app TikTok violate trademark? TikTok, previously known as Musical.ly, is a for-profit app that runs on IOS and Android which allows it's users to upload short videos at includes a backtrack. The app was launched in 2017. Kesha Sebert is an American singer, songwriter, rapper, and actress, who on August 7, 2009, released the song Tik Tok, which went on to be a "chart-topping" song, and to date has sold 25 million copies. Although, the app Tik Tok does not profit from merchandise sales, could they be in violation of the song Tik Tok's trademark since it's still profiting?
As usual with trademarks, the key question is "will reasonable people be confused about the source or affiliations of the product or service". Trademarks are, as you already know, limited to a particular industry or area of business, in general. Displaying user videos is not exactly the same thing as a particular popular song, but they just might be close enough for some consumer confusion tom occur. Whether reasonable people are in fact confused into thinking that the app is in some way sponsored by the makers of the song is a question of fact. A trademark suit would probably need to present some sort of evidence that confusion had occurred or was likely. It also may make a difference whether "Tik Tok" has been registered as a trademark. In the US, registration gets greater protection than mere use. (In some countries there is no protection without registration.) It is also possible that the app has already licensed the rights to the term from the trademark owner for the song. This would avoid a potential suit. It is also worth noting that the term "Tik Tok" is not original with the song. It dates back, in that spelling, to at least the "Oz" books by L. Frank Baum and others Tik-Tok of Oz dates from 1914, and the character of the Tik-Tok from the book Ozma of Oz (1907). Terms that are not original coinages are less strongly protected in trademark law, and the app could claim to be alluding to the Oz character, not the more recent song. A comment by ub3rst4r says that: the term "Tik Tok" is registered as a trademark in the USA by "Bytedance Ltd" (which is the company that operates the app). If that is correct, the US Patent and Trademark office (PTO) came to at least a preliminary conclusion that this trademark did not infringe anyone else's trademark. That doesn't meant that an infringement suit is doomed, but it would make any such suit harder and less likely. It seems that, as described in this news story a company selling watchs under the name "Tic Tok" was sent a cease and desist letter on behalf of the singer Kesha Sebert. The firm responded by filing a suit for a declaratory judgement. The case is Wimo Labs LLC v. Kesha Sebert, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, No. 1:11-cv-02978. However, google does not show any resolution of this case, one way or the other. This was brought to my attention in a comment by StephanS. As this docket record shows, the case was dismissed by agreement without prejudice, apparently after a settlement (as stated in the comment by user muru). Thus there was no ruling on the merits of the case.
To do so I used some images and Gifs which may be under copyright but since I don't earn money for myself and there is no company backing me I was hoping that there is some protection for private persons like me who just want to showcase the project. Sorry. If your website is public facing (i.e. not password protected and available only to family and close friends), you need to follow copyright law. There is no exception to copyright just because a project is run by an individual for non-commercial purposes. I am also insecure about the GDPR regulations since I give users the ability to create an account and try it out. Your profile says you're in the EU. Then you need to comply with the GDPR. Is there any way to protect me against greedy lawyers and companies? Could I write something like: "This website is a peace of art" and save myself with arguments like "artistic freedom" or "free speech"? Nope. A controversial website run by Peter Sunde had at one point a "free speech" disclaimer (similar to the one you propose) posted. However, Sunde did never use this defense in court: Finnish court slaps Peter Sunde with €350k fine. If he had shown up in court, I am pretty sure the court would have told him that such a disclaimer has no legal merit. The only protection that will make you completely safe is to adhere to the law.
Copyright subsists in "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression..." 17 USC §102 Originality requires "independent creation plus a modicum of creativity". Feist Pubs., Inc. v. Rural Tel. Svc. Co., Inc. 499 U.S. 340 (1991) The creator of a work generally owns the copyright to that work. 17 USC §201 Twitter's Terms of Service say: You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed). So, you maintain the copyright ownership, and you grant Twitter a licence to do whatever Twitter wants with that work. This allows Twitter to show your tweet around its network and to allow for re-tweeting etc. (Although, it could have done those things with a less permissive licence.) You are not giving other users that licence.
We can't tell you if you can do that or not, because that would be specific legal advise. You should consult an attorney who specializes in trademark law to get an estimation of how risky it would be to use that name. So I am just giving you a couple general pointers. Names are not protected by copyright, but by trademarks. The purpose of trademarks is to prevent consumer confusion. They are supposed to prevent someone from selling a product under a name which consumers might mistake for official merchandise of someone else. Media companies in particular tend to be very protective of their trademarks, because merchandising is often one of their main sources of revenue. And they don't want to share that revenue with people creating knockoff products. Also, they must fight for their trademark in court, because when they only enforce it selectively, then they risk that a court will consider the mark so widely used already that it is no longer worth protecting. But the show is from the 1950s. Is the trademark still protected after all that time? Maybe. There are registered trademarks and unregistered trademarks. Registered trademarks, which usually but not always are followed by an &quot;®&quot; symbol, need to be renewed in regular intervals. So if someone still pays for the renewal, it might still be a protected trademark. Unregistered trademarks, which usually but not always are followed by a &quot;™&quot; symbol, are protected as long as they are &quot;used in commerce&quot;. Which means that if the IP owner of that show still sells products branded as &quot;Winky Dink and you&quot;, they can probably still claim unregistered trademark protection. In order to find out, you would need to do your own research or pay your attorney to do a trademark research for you. Are your proposed names even a trademark violation? Perhaps, perhaps not. That's for a court to decide. Personally I think that &quot;Winky Dink and Me&quot; is more infringing than &quot;My Winky Dink Syndrome&quot;, because the first is a lot closer to the original name and brand image, giving it a higher likeliness of causing consumers to mistake it for an official &quot;Winky Dink and You&quot; product. But that's an argument you got to make in court. Estimating the chance that the judge will side with you and how much in legal costs it will take you to get to the point where you are even going to have the opportunity to make that argument is a job for your attorney.
In general, using content provided by another who incorrectly posted it under a permissive license, such as a CC license, does not grant a valid license from the real copyright holder. That is, if A writes some code (or a song, or creates an image, or whatever else), it is protected by copyright. If B then posts it to the web, with a statement that it is released under a particular license, without having obtained permission from A, then B's &quot;release&quot; is of no value, because B had no rights to grant. If C downloads and uses this content, relying on B's license, then A could take legal action against C. C would probably be considered (in the US) an &quot;innocent infringer&quot; which reduces the minimum statutory damage amount, but does not otherwise change C's legal position. A could, if it chose, bring suit and possibly obtain a judgement including some damages. But to return to the practical case of code posted on one of the SE sites. Given the comparatively short code sections usually posted, and that they do not usually form a complete working program, and given further the stated educational purpose of SE, it is likely that in US law such a posting would constitute fair use, and in the law of other countries fall under one or another exception to copyright. That is a general conclusion, the details would matter. I have not heard of a case similar to that suggested in the question. I find it unlikely that an SE poster would post copyright-protected code without permission, that is valuable enough to be worth an infringement suit, and substantial enough and having enough effect on th market for the original to be outside the protection of fair use. Such a situatiion is, of course, possible, even if unlikely. Note that a cease-and-desist letter is not a court order, and is really only a threat of court action. its only legal effect is to put the recipient on notice, so that continued infringement is not without awareness of the copyright claim. To have legal effect the claimant must actually bring an infringement suit, which is not without cost.
No, the musical composition itself (i.e., what you might express tangibly in sheet music) has copyright distinct from the copyright that exists on Led Zepplin's recording of the song. Your new cover will still be a derivative work of the musical composition. When you record a cover of a copyrighted song, you must get permission from the composer (or current copyright holder of the composition). In the United States, however, you can compel the copyright holder to grant you license under 17 USC §115. Under a compulsory license, you pay a fixed fee per copy of the cover that you distribute (currently 9.1 cents), and the copyright holder must allow you to distribute those copies. See the circular Compulsory License for Making and Distributing Phonorecords from the U.S. Copyright Office. I am not aware of other countries that have a similar compulsory license scheme, so in those jurisdictions, you would need to negotiate a license with the publisher or an intermediary agency they use. However, even if you did get a compulsory license to distribute your cover song, you must get permission to synchronize the song with a video. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers describes the copyright holder's exclusive synchronization right: A synchronization or "synch" right involves the use of a recording of musical work in audio-visual form: for example as part of a motion picture, television program, commercial announcement, music video or other videotape. Often, the music is "synchronized" or recorded in timed relation with the visual images. Since the synchronization right cannot be acquired under a compulsory license, you will need to have the publisher (or whoever the copyright holder is) agree to license the synchronization right to you under whatever terms the two of you can agree upon.
Sound recordings can be, and new ones normally are, protected by copyright. The copyright would usually be held by the person who made the recording, or that person's employer, not by the speaker if that is a different person. Use of such a recording without permission might well be copyright infringement. But more clearly and directly, broadcasting a statement: I am {performer} and you are listening to {song name} on my favorite station {station name } without authorization from the performer would in many jurisdictions violate the performer's right of publicity, giving the performer grounds to sue the station. It might well also be false advertising, implying that the performer had endorsed the station when s/he has not done so. That would depend on the specific laws of the jurisdiction where the broadcast was made. A suit over publicity rights or an action for false advertising would probably be simpler than a copyright suit in such a case. I think that most if not all such announcements are made with the consent of the performers involved, and are probably recorded directly by such performers. (For one thing it is usually in the performer's interest to cooperate with stations and networks that play the performer's work.) If such announcements were somehow artificially synthesized, but with the permission of the performer, and of any owner of copyright in any recording used, I don't think there would be any legal problem. If an AI was trained to create a good imitation of a person's voice with9ut diretly copying a recording, I am not at all sure if there would be any copyright infringemetn under current law. That may be an area where the law will need to change to respond to the technology. But if such an imitation were used without permission to make the kind of statements discussed above, the personality rights issue and false advertising issue would still be there. Those do not in any way depend on whether the announcement uses a copy of a recording or not, those are both about the use of someone's name and reputation without authorization. In fact, even if the announcement did not pretend to use the performer's voife, those woudl still bne an issue. Suppose the announcer saids, in his orm her own voice: {Performer} said to tell you that s/he is glad thit his/her song is being playing on his favorite outlet {station name}. There is no technical fakery there, deep or shallow, but if done without authorization it is still a problem, or would be in some jurisdictions at least. If technology is used to create a plausible imitation of someone's voice, but it was not distributed with any claim, direct or implied, to be that person, then the case is different. I suspect that in most jurisdictions there would be no grounds for legal action, just as celebrity imitators do not need permission as long as they don't fake endorsements.
The answer to the question "can so-and-so sue me?" is almost always "yes", regardless of context. Such a suit might be baseless, and it might get settled in your favor, but you still have to spend the time and money to defend yourself. This can be disastrous for a start-up that's trying to get off the ground, and it's how patent trolls make their money. (I'm not accusing SnapChat of engaging in such tactics as a rule, of course; I'm just pointing out that the legal system does allow for them.) Whether or not you are likely to be sued is a separate question, and one that can really only be effectively addressed by a trademark attorney with full knowledge of the particularities of your situation.