The hashtag (#) has come to play a vital role in consumer
society, which most businesses cannot afford to overlook. As the
use of hashtags grows, Russian law has had to address whether they
can be registered as trademarks in Russia and if it is possible for
a third party to infringe another entity's trademark rights by
using a hashtag that includes a registered mark
Background
A hashtag is a type of metadata tag used on social networks,
which allows people to apply dynamic, user-generated tagging. This
in turn helps others to easily find messages with specific themes
or content. The use of this tag was first proposed by Chris Messina
in a tweet in 2007. He decided not to patent it because he
felt that it was "born of the Internet and owned by no
one". The word 'hashtag' was added to the Oxford
English Dictionary in 2014, so common had its use become. Today,
they are used worldwide by businesses, celebrities and influencers,
among others, not only for navigation
