Fitness Influencer Faces Huge Backlash After Wild Trademark Disputes

[00:00:00]Right. So, for today's video, we are actually going to be talking about two different topics. Two topics that are completely unrelated, but are also ironically very, very similar because both topics include an influencer who has trademarked a very common phrase and then try to use that trademark to either stop people selling items or to stop people running events or in one case stop people naming a Spotify playlist what they want to name it, which again, it's a bit bizarre, but we'll get to it.

[00:00:27]And in fact, the trademarks themselves are also very similar. They're both hot girl blanks or hot girl reads and hot girl walk. Two very common phrases that have been around for decades. It seems that two influencers have tried to claim ownership of and they have both received backlash because of this. Now, in the first example, the main person you'd be aware of is a user called Ali Rose Core.

[00:00:48]Now, in a lot of Ali's videos, she talks about what book she likes, what book she's currently reading. I guess she's a book talker, if you want to say that.

[00:00:55]And she also has a website where she sells clothing and bookmarks. And as we can see right here on the clothing, we can see the phrase hot girls read. Now, as we're going to see in a bit, this phrase has been around for a long time, a lot longer than Alli has been making videos. But Alli actually end up filing a trademark for this phrase. And once the trademark was approved, Alli ends up posting this on her Instagram stories saying, "This is celebratory. Of course, of course, of course. But I also want to very gently with peace and love say that I officially have the trademark for Hot Girls Read in the following categories.

[00:01:24]Bookmarks, stickers, notebook covers/book covers, notepads, sweatshirts, t-shirts, and hooded sweatshirt. I have seen Hot Girls Read on lots of items from other businesses that follow me. So if that is you, please remove those listings from your site as soon as possible with love. So yeah, it kind of feels like a public cease and desist. With love, of course.

[00:01:43]Right. And I think it's fair to say people were not happy with Alli once they saw this. Now, the trademark itself was in fact real. We can see it right here. Although it does say the status is dead and cancelled in a minute. We'll get to that. But yeah, following Ali's story, people started receiving messages. These were people who were selling items with the phrase hot girls read on it. And it is worth mentioning here is, as we'll see, Alli is claiming that these messages didn't come from her. I don't know if that means it was like from her team or if she's just claiming like it was someone unrelated to her, like a stranger was trying to make her look bad. I don't know. But we can see some of the messages here like this one saying, "Hello, Hot Girls Reed is now trademarked by Ali Rose Co. these listings should be removed." There's another conversation here saying, "Hello, Hot Girls Read is now trademarked by Ali Rose Code. These listings should be removed." To which this person replied saying, "Got to love greed. Thanks for the heads up." To which this account said, "Yes, trademarking to protect your business and original content is important." To which this user said, "My understanding of original content may differ from yours, but I wish you the best of luck."

[00:02:37]And here's the thing, right? We have seen so many examples of like a popular phrase that maybe recently went viral even though like I said this phrase seems to have been around for a long time which we'll see in just a second but there has been many examples where a phrase has went viral and then some type of like business person or lawyer whatever who's trying to look for some money will then trademark that phrase. I think one example that comes to mind straight away is uh very demure very mindful if you remember that went viral on Tik Tok I feel like a year ago two years ago and I remember there being a situation where people were trying to file a trademark for that catchphrase so the original creator couldn't use it and like commercialize the phrase that they made popular but usually when people do this they don't have like a public persona right they don't care about their reputation online like they don't care about receiving backlash they're just doing it for money right and probably hoping that the original creator will pay them for the trademark or something along those lines. So, when those people receive backlash, they obviously don't really care. But being a Tik Tocker who sells items like clothing and bookmarks, you would obviously care about your reputation and filing a trademark for a phrase that's been used way before you started using it. It's probably not the best idea. And because of this, Ali started receiving a bunch of backlash. And it got to a point where people trying to figure out like, how can we stop this? And it actually resulted in someone filing a motion to cancel the trademark. I mean, we can see a video here from a user called Tam Vincent Bent, who is an IP attorney. And this was uploaded whilst the trademark was still active. But in this video, Tam says like she doesn't believe that this trademark will last.

[00:04:07]>> But when I looked up the trademark, I saw something that made me think, huh, Ali Rosen Co. isn't going to get to keep this trademark. Because today, June 5th, somebody actually filed a motion to cancel Ali Rose's trademark. And the argument in that cancellation is that hot girls read is a common phrase that has been used in the literary community and was in use long before Ali Rosen Co.

[00:04:34]ever used it. Now an important detail to understand the gravity of that argument is that Ali Rosen Co is claiming a date of first use of January 14th, 2021.

[00:04:46]>> Yeah. So, this made it pretty easy for people to prove that Alli didn't own this phrase and shouldn't own the trademark for it because again, as we just heard Tam say, she mentions that her first use was in January 2021. And in this motion of cancel, they have to prove that the phrase was used commercially way before Ali started using it. And uh yeah, they easily prove that. We can see an example here from a mug that was posted in 2016. So, by the looks of it, Ali probably wasn't going to own this trademark for very long. I don't know how long like the legal process would take. It might take a while, but it does seem like eventually it would be very likely that Alli would no longer own the trademark. But that doesn't really matter anymore because Alli has actually made a video responding to the backlash saying that she has actually canceled the trademark herself.

[00:05:28]>> Hi, I want to talk about my trademark.

[00:05:30]First and foremost, the trademark is being surrendered. It is in the process of being filed right now to be abandoned. Um, I want to say that it does take time for that to go through, so it's not going to show up automatically, but the paperwork has already been filed. But more importantly, I want to say I'm so sorry to every small business that I harmed in doing this. The decision was made more as like a business strategy decision than a human being decision. And I take full accountability for that. That was entirely wrong on my end.

[00:05:56]>> Yeah. Honestly, I just don't really understand the thought process. Like I don't know how she thought that was going to go. Like to me, it seems very obvious that this would be the reaction, especially considering it is a very popular phrase. And yeah, maybe you can like trademark certain popular phrases if someone hasn't done that before you, but it doesn't mean you should.

[00:06:13]Especially again if you care about your reputation, right? If you're a Tik Tocker who also has their own store, it just doesn't seem like a good idea. Now, obviously, if you're filing a trademark for like your unique business name or whatever, completely fair enough. You should definitely do that. But when it comes to a popular phrase that has been used in the community for years upon years upon years, yeah, this was probably always going to be the reaction. Now, like I mentioned earlier, Alli does actually go on to say that she never messaged any stores or anyone to take down their items from their website. And again, I'm unsure if she means like this was just a stranger or if it was someone from her team. She doesn't really go into much detail about this.

[00:06:51]>> I want to clear up the last within the last week, I've seen a lot of um screenshots and messages from people saying that I sent them a seasoned assist or I sent them a message on Etsy to remove any Hot Girls Read items. I want to say none of those came from me um because that was not my intent. I have not sent any of that since all of this started. Um as for the Hot Girls Read apparel that I have on the shelves, it is currently up on my site with all profits being donated to two different charities, Room to Read and Read and Feed, which I also have linked in my bio. Um and I just want to say once again, I'm so sorry. Um this is my way of trying to write my wrongs that I do understand should not have been wrongs in the first place. And at the end of the day, I care most about community over anything when it comes to my business.

[00:07:32]>> So yeah, that was Alli's response to all of this. And if we take a look at the comment section, we can see what people thought. Like there's a comment here saying, "But why would you trademark something that you didn't come up with in the first place that's got 27,000 likes?" Another comment here saying, "I'm glad you did apologize and surrender it." Unfortunately, I think this caused irreparable harm to your business and your character. There is also a lot of comments wanting Alli to clarify what she means about never sending these messages to these other businesses. Like, was it someone on her team? Is she claiming that these people are lying? And yeah, I'd say overall looking at the comment section, it seems like people still aren't overly happy with Alli because of this situation. But this is where I actually want to move on to the second topic for today's video, which again is actually very similar to the first topic. We just spoke about a trademark that was filed for Hot Girls Reed. And we're now going to talk about a trademark that was filed for Hot Girl Walks. And the main person you'd be aware of here is the well the creator and founder of the HotGirl Walk, Mia Lind. And as we're about to find out, I think it's fair to say Mia is a lot more protective over this trademark compared to what we just saw from Alli and even going as far as to allegedly send a legal notice to someone who had a playlist on Spotify called Hotgirl Walks informing them that they have to change the name of the playlist, which of course I think should go without saying sounds a bit ridiculous, and that's because it is. But either way, let's actually add some more context to all of this. So Mia makes a lot of content on social media around walking. And she calls these walks a hot girl walk.

[00:08:53]>> It is 5:00. I have walked like zero steps today. It is daylight savings time. So that means I'm not going to be able to go outside and go on a hot girl walk. So let's hawker walk on the treadmill. Also look at this new workout set.

[00:09:05]>> Now at first glance you might just think that this is like a series that Mia does that she calls a hot girl walk where she makes like fitness videos. But no, this is something that Mia claims that she invented basically. And in fact, on a bunch of videos, Mia explains a bit further what a hot girl walk is. And she says the reason that she invented this is because at the time, no one was walking for fitness reasons.

[00:09:26]>> I've said this story a million times on my page, but I created the Hawker Walk when I was at a very low point in my life. It was co I was going through a lot at the time. There was a huge stigma surrounding walking. Nobody was walking for fitness or for fun. It was co and so walking only existed as like the post dinner thing that your mom made you do.

[00:09:47]And it sounds so dumb looking back on it, but people were not really walking for fitness like that.

[00:09:53]>> Yeah. I mean, Mia is saying that it sounds like dumb looking back on it now, but I'm really struggling to remember a time ever in my lifetime where walking hasn't been seen as like a fitness thing as well as just being like a fun thing.

[00:10:05]I mean look right this statement obviously does seem a bit ridiculous because of course walking has always been a fitness thing. I guess what she's trying to say is maybe like the beginning of co less people were walking because of everything that was happening. I guess that's what she's saying but yeah I mean obviously walking has been used for fitness forever now.

[00:10:23]Mia goes on to explain further. She mentions that she did a bunch of research and she found out that walking has a lot of health benefits. And then she also wanted to include like thinking about your goals and stuff whilst you're walking.

[00:10:35]>> And then I realized doing a lot of research that walking actually had a lot of health benefits. And then I realized the thing that was holding people back from going on long walks. And that was well, what do you do when you're alone with your thoughts? So, I created a three-step methodology to think about first the things you're grateful for, next your goals that you have achieved and that you want to achieve. And then to end this video, Mia goes on to explain that she told her friends about this. They thought it was great. They thought that Mia should mention this online and like on Tik Tok. And then Mia also goes on to explain that she did some research at the time and realized that hot girl walks don't exist.

[00:11:10]>> They were the ones who encouraged me to post about this on Tik Tok. And before I did, I did a little quick Google search to see if anything like this existed.

[00:11:19]Anything the word hot girl walk, anything like that, and there was nothing like it. So, I posted about this on Tik Tok and it totally blew up. And because I created the Hawker Walk, I trademarked it, too. This way, I can keep control over the mission of the Hawker Walk, which is to keep fitness accessible and inclusive.

[00:11:38]>> Okay, so there you have it. Right. Mia explains that she invented the hot girl walk and what it is and how she came up with the idea. This again is something that a lot of people have disputed saying that this been around for decades. It is also a phrase that Mega Nostalia made even more popular like I believe in 2019. And I mean look even for me right it's not exactly a phrase I would use but I feel like I've also heard people mention like hot girl anything like with like hot girl blank and you can just fill in the blank with basically anything. I feel like I've heard that on multiple occasions for years. So, I was also shocked that you could file a trademark for this. And by the looks of it, Mia is not just claiming that she came up with the idea of like walking whilst also thinking about specific things like your goals and what you're grateful for. I believe Mia is also claiming that she came up with the phrase hot girl walk because she also uploaded a video here where she responds to a comment that says, "Girl, I've been using the saying hot girl walk for years and only now am I finding the person who invented it. Well done, queen." And yeah, Mia confirms this and says that she did invent it.

[00:12:34]>> So, this is true. I did create and coin the hogwag. Yes, believe it or not, this came from this brain right here. Let's talk about it.

[00:12:42]>> And yeah, as we can see here, Mia has filed for a lot of trademarks. Some that are live and registered, some that are pending. But if I just scroll through here, they're just kind of like different variations of hot girl walk under different categories. So like hot girl walk, but then also HGW. There's also some that we can see here that are pending for gratitude, goals, and confidence. And then also some of her examples like Pink Girl Walk. Oh, and I've also just found another one that's pending that says you're already hot.

[00:13:09]But yeah, either way, you get the point, right? Mia makes content. She mentions this hot girl walk. She's filed a trademark. So now, let's actually get into some of the videos that were uploaded in the last week because Mia has been called out in a bunch of videos. And in fact, to show you these videos, I'm going to actually cut to Callum in a few hours because I've just realized I'm late for football. So, um, yeah, it's going to cut to me probably when I'm a lot more tired, you know.

[00:13:31]since I would have been doing a lot of hot girl running. So, uh, yeah, I'll see you in a second. Right. So, as I was saying, there have been a few videos uploaded in the past week or so talking about the way that MIA kind of enforces this trademark. I think the video that kind of kickstarted all of this and kind of resulted in a bunch of other people making videos talking about their experience was uploaded by a user called Decay Fit or Deie. And as we can see right here, the video is currently on about 3 million views in just 6 days.

[00:13:57]Now, before we get to that video in particular, Deie did upload a few videos before this announcing an event that she was hosting. It was a free event where people could go meet up, make new friends, and go on this walk. And she just so happened to call it a hot girl walk.

[00:14:11]>> If you're in the DMV, you should go on a hot girl walk with us. This Saturday, June 13th, we'll be hosting a hot girl walk where we'll walk about 3 miles. And then after, we'll get to enjoy some iced yerba mate and provian coffee. We'll yap, take pictures, and get our steps in. It seemed like a good idea, but this was until Deie was informed that she is not actually allowed to call this event a hot girl walk.

[00:14:29]>> Legally, I'm not supposed to say this is a hot girl walk.

[00:14:32]>> I don't know if you know this, but hot girl walk is trademarked, so you're not allowed to use it. I personally didn't know that. So, when I wanted to host a hot girl walk event, they told me to take it down immediately. So, instead, this is a high temperatureed woman walk, which got the message across and in my opinion was a lot better. This was a free community walk with girls in the DMV area.

[00:14:46]>> Yeah. So the rest of the video is just kind of talking about the event in particular. So she doesn't really actually talk much about the fact that she had to change the name. She just mentions that she had to change the name, what she changed it, too. Kind of made like a little joke out of it. And then showed this email right here that was sent from a company called Posh.

[00:15:01]Posh being a website where I believe you can like put your events on there and then people can see them and decide if they want to go. But as we can see, Posh emailed Deany saying, "Hope all is well.

[00:15:09]We've received a copyright infringement report related to your event. Get your HotGirl Walk in." The report specifically states, "Hotgirl Walk LLC owns multiple registered trademarks in the United States, including trademarks and then the numbers for the trademarks, which prohibits offers from hosting a HotGirl Walk event. Hot girl Walk LLC is requesting that the event be removed from your site. We want to give you the opportunity to remove or change the event details. Please take a moment to resolve this within 24 hours. If we don't hear back from you within that time, we'll need to remove the event from our platform until the matter is resolved." So, yeah, she had to change her name for this event. She made a video mentioning that she had to change her name. kind of made a little joke about it. But apparently Mia wasn't overly happy with this video because as we can see in this follow-up video from Deie, Mia actually left a comment on the original video. I believe it's been deleted. I can't find the original comment. So it does actually kind of cut off on this screenshot that we can see here. But we see the beginning of the comment. It says, "This is so shady for no reason. Lol. I actually coined that phrase hot girl walk and filed for a trademark shortly after posting my first video and I host events all around the world for free for women." And yeah, like I mentioned, the comment kind of cuts off there, so I'm not really sure what it goes on to say, but this is Dean's response.

[00:16:12]>> So, this is Mia, the woman who trademark and copyrighted hot girl walk. And I don't know, at what point my video seemed kind of shady. Maybe it was in the beginning where I said that legally I'm not supposed to call it a hot girl walk, which is true. I'm not because you would come for me. And all the girls that were there knew cuz I started off as hot girl walk. All the girls that came there knew it was a hot girl walk to begin with. So, I wasn't going to continue saying this was a hot girl walk. I had to let them know that I'm changing the name and I can't use it anymore.

[00:16:41]>> Yeah. So, De basically goes on to say like she wasn't trying to be shady. She wasn't trying to like send hate to me or anything like that. She just kind of made a joke about it, which she feels like she can do, which obviously she can do. And she was just kind of explaining why she had to change the name. But this is where things get a lot more interesting because if we look at the comment section, there's quite a lot of people talking about the fact that they have been sent cease and desist from MIA. like this com right here from a user called Whitney Simmons who says she sent me a cease and assist last year.

[00:17:06]There's also comments from people mentioning that according to Google Trends, Hot Girl Walk has been mentioned since 2008. People are also bringing up the fact that the walk is free, so why does it matter? And yeah, looking at the rest of the comments, people just confuse why Mia trademarked this phrase in the first place because again, like I mentioned, it seems like it's been a phrase for a long time. But this is where a bunch of other videos started going viral talking about their experience with Mia and this like hot girl walk trademark. Like for example, a video here from a user called Train. And Train actually goes on to explain that her podcast was removed from Spotify because there was something in the intro about a hot girl walk. I've been waiting so long to talk about this. Insert photo of me crying, distraught, waking up to see that my podcast, the Wellness Cafe podcast, my life's work. My podcast that I started to help women's mental health after struggling with my own mental health so badly when I was younger was taken off of Spotify because Hot Girl Walk is trademarked. If you're wondering why I changed the intro to the podcast, there you go.

[00:18:03]>> So yeah, when I heard this, of course, I was a bit curious. I was wondering what this intro was. Why did the podcast get removed? So I actually went back to look at some older podcasts that Trinity had uploaded. And unless they have changed, I don't know if you can edit podcasts that have already been uploaded to Spotify because again, these were uploaded a couple of years ago. But this is the intro.

[00:18:23]>> We're having some girly chats about hot girl summer today. Happy Monday. Welcome back to the Wellness Cafe podcast, your go-to hot girl podcast. I'm your host, Tren Tandelier.

[00:18:33]>> So yeah, from what I can tell, it's just the way that she would like intro the the podcast and she mentioned Hot Girl Walk in it and that got the podcast removed. And Trinity does also mention that there were some other trademarks that Mia mentioned in the cease and desist.

[00:18:46]>> Didn't even tell you girls the best part. In the cease and desist, it says she has Oh my god, I can't even get this out with a straight face. She has pending trademarks for the words goals, gratitude, and confidence. Girl thinks she invented the universe. One thing that I do respect is the sheer audacity to think that you invented confidence.

[00:19:07]Like, that can't be real. And yeah, I just really do feel like that this is enough example where it's like just because you can doesn't mean you should, right? Because obviously, as we saw, Mia does actually own the trademark for Hot Girl Walk. But again, you can't really be surprised that this is the reaction since it's such a popular phrase, especially if you're then going to use the fact that you have this trademark to take down events that are free. Also take down Spotify accounts because they mention Hot Girl Walk in the intro. And then also take down people's playlists on Spotify, which we're going to get to now. Now, ironically, this video that we're about to watch is actually uploaded by a user called HotGirl Jess.

[00:19:42]And in this video, she mentions that her Spotify playlist was removed.

[00:19:45]>> So, my playlist called Hot Girl Walk got taken down by Spotify because Mia Lind, who's the creator of Hot Girl Walk, said that I was infringing on her trademark.

[00:19:55]I just want to start off by saying I genuinely had no idea that this was a trademarked thing. I thought saying hot girl walk was just a trend on social media. I thought that Hot Girl Anything was just Meg the Stallion. So, I genuinely had no idea when I made the playlist. I just made a playlist.

[00:20:12]>> I mean, I just don't get it because I mean, as far as I'm aware, like you don't make money from Spotify playlists, right? The money would obviously go to the artists that are on the Spotify playlist. Although, to be fair, Jess does mention that she had some of her songs on the playlist as well. But still, like taking down a Spotify playlist, it seems a bit ridiculous to me. Like I've listened to playlists that people have made called like a World Cup playlist, you know, which is just like songs that kind of get you in like the World Cup mood. And I can't imagine like FIFA removing that because he mentioned the World Cup in it. And FIFA are like an awful company. I don't even think they would do that. And again, we have yet another example from a user called Amita Glows. And in this video, Amita mentions that her Instagram account actually ended up getting banned because she used the phrase hot girl walk. And it actually started off with her getting like a bunch of notifications that like her posts have been reported. phrase everyone says on Instagram. So I called my event that free event. Wasn't making any money off of it. Literally just like something for girls in Calgary to do.

[00:21:08]And my posts kept getting reported and I was so confused because I was like I have no idea what's happening. And I kept getting these like that this post was getting reported. So I deleted it cuz I was like okay well there's obviously something wrong with this post. I have no idea. Deleted the post.

[00:21:24]>> And like I mentioned this actually resulted in her account being banned.

[00:21:27]Now, the important thing to mention here is that this was actually Amita's like personal training business account and it was banned and she could no longer get it back.

[00:21:36]>> My living comes off of this page. Then September 10th, I want to say, I open my Instagram page and it's gone.

[00:21:47]My Instagram page got permanently deleted because whoever owns this trademark and I have seen it on social media, she was constantly reporting my page so many times that I got banned for violating community guidelines of trademark infringement. And because she reported all of my posts multiple times, even after I deleted posts, I got my account taken away. Now, Amita does go on to mention that she tried contacting Mia to try and like resolve this, but apparently there was just no response. In fact, Amia ended up getting blocked.

[00:22:22]>> I have been trying for the past 8 months now since I got taken away to get my account back. I have emailed her. I have DM'd her and then she blocked me on Instagram.

[00:22:33]So, can't reach her. I emailed their email multiple times explaining how sorry I was. I had no idea it was trademarked. apologized. Like I don't know what else to do. Like I would I would never steal somebody's trademark again. I own a company who's owns trademarks. Like I know how this works.

[00:22:54]I apologized multiple times. Never heard back from this email. She blocked me on social media and I had to start a whole new Instagram account. I spent six years growing my Instagram and growing my personal training business. And now I only have five clients. I had to get a part-time job to make up the income I lost from my Instagram page being deleted and I can't get it back.

[00:23:16]>> So yeah, I guess moral of the story here is before anyone goes to post anything and mentions a hot girl something, you might want to check for trademarks cuz your whole account might get banned. I just find it kind of ironic that both these topics have happened in the last like few weeks and again they're very similar. both involve trademarks around hot girl something. And I just can't personally see how owning this trademark would be worth like ruining your reputation over and receiving a bunch of backlash, especially if you're going to enforce it in the way that Mia clearly has recently. But with all that being said, I would love to know your opinions in the comment section down below on everything that we spoke about in today's video. Who do you think is the right? Who do you think is the wrong?

[00:23:54]All that stuff. And uh yeah, I'm going to leave a video there. So, if you did enjoy, please do leave a like down below, subscribe if you are new, and until the next one, I'll see you guys in a bit.