YouTube has significantly strengthened its commitment towards protecting the intellectual property of its users. Automatic protection is provided to check against unauthorised breach of content copyright, effectively blocking any videos that use unauthorised content [1]. Moreover, the protection offered by YouTube now extends to trademark infringement cases. The policies of this video platform specifically prohibit infringement of registered trademarks and relying on the shoulders of its parent company, Google Inc, YouTube has developed an automatic trademark infringement scanning service. Any videos that are found to infringe existing trademarks are blocked and channels suspended [1]. This software giant still recognises limitations in the use of automatic solutions and also allows YouTube users to file a trademark complaint manually, through a simplified form that merely requires information about the individual making the complaint, trademark details and content details, the rest is solved by YouTube [1].
This is a very positive sign for trademark protection, lifting the responsibility of monitoring and addressing trademarks infringement attempts by the owners of these trademarks and utilising innovative solutions to provide convenient automatic monitoring service and ease of handling any cases of trademark infringement.
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[1] YouTube Help (2020), “File a trademark complaint”, available from: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6154228?hl=en
