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When Sam Joseph Karam received an email from online retailer Etsy saying 11 of his T-shirt designs bearing the slang term "bruh" had been taken down for a trademark violation, he was immediately suspicious.
"It's usually one or two listings. It's not 11 in a row. So that obviously caught our attention pretty quickly," Karam said.
Karam, who owns the U.S.-based apparel company Customized Designs and sells clothing on sites like Etsy, says the platform also revoked his Star Seller badge — a mark given by the platform that means the seller provides top-tier customer service. Following that, he says he noticed an immediate drop in sales.
In the email, Etsy told Karam the shirt had been reported by someone named Malik Yawar Abbas, who holds a Canadian trademark for the term "bruh."
Karam is one of multiple Etsy sellers who told CBC News they've had items taken down from the platform after their use of the word was reported by the trademark holder. CBC News reviewed multiple emails Etsy sent to Karam and two other sellers that showed the takedowns came in response to complaints by Abbas.
Karam says Abbas, the trademark holder, is "squatting" on the trademark, aiming to make money by licensing the use of the word to others rather than by making a product of his own. Some legal experts say it's up to platforms and the legal system to better prevent trademarks from being used in this way.
No clothes for sale, request for payment
A trademark for the word "bruh" was issued by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) in July 2025 in connection with selling many kinds of clothing, according to the government's trademarks database. Another trademark for the same word was recently granted to Abbas for use in advertising restaurant services.
In an email to CBC News, CIPO did not answer questions about the "bruh" trademark, but said each trademark application the office receives is "examined on a case-by-case basis."
After the listings were removed, Karam found the trademark holder's website and was surprised to find a section detailing how he protects the "bruh" trademark and directing others to license with him in order to get permission to use it.
"We didn't invent the word. the streets did. the internet did. but we realized its power," the site reads.
The site doesn't offer clothes for sale — just mock-ups of clothing and items like energy drinks using the word "bruh."
In an email to CBC News, trademark holder Abbas said those images are there to show "potential commercial applications" of the brand.
When Karam contacted Abbas about the Etsy takedowns to see if he would withdraw his complaint, Abbas said he would if Karam agreed to a number of terms and paid him $1,000.
Karam refused, and says the signs in this case all point toward what he says is "trademark squatting."
"It's quite disheartening," Karam said. "When you have someone immediately turn around and say, 'I want $1,000, simply to go back and retract my complaint,' you know right there that they're acting in bad faith. That's my personal belief."
Abbas told CBC News via email that the $1,000 was a proposed settlement that was "part of a negotiated resolution of a disputed trademark matter. It was not paid, and no monetary settlement was concluded."
He also disagrees with the idea that he is squatting on the trademark.
"BRUH is a lawfully registered Canadian trademark being developed as a commercial licensing brand," Abbas wrote.
He has since withdrawn the complaint to Etsy, which he says he did after the 11 designs were removed and those products were no longer being offered to Canadian consumers.
But Karam says the "damage has been done."
He is currently in contact with an intellectual property lawyer and is considering taking legal action to try to invalidate the trademark on the basis of bad faith.
Bad faith trademarks can be taken down
Under a relatively new part of Canada's trademark laws added in 2019, a trademark can be invalidated if it was filed in "bad faith," explains Carys Craig, a professor at York University's Osgoode Hall Law School specializing in intellectual property law.
While cases arguing bad faith have popped up, she says this part of the law is still somewhat untested, so she's not sure what a court might decide in this case.
Craig says licensing can be a valid way of using a trademark. Overall, she says the way the "bruh" trademark is being presented on the website, along with the takedown orders that are being sought, might be enough to reach the standard of bad faith.
"We just don't quite know what that looks like yet."
Abbas told CBC News he trademarked the term in order to build a "licensing-only brand at the time when there was no BRUH-named brand in Canada," and disagrees that "protecting, enforcing or commercially developing" the brand should be characterized as bad faith.
"If there is a genuine disagreement about the validity, scope, or infringement of the registration, Canadian law provides mechanisms and forums to determine those issues," he said.
Does a trademark mean you own a word?
Despite broad use, general terms and pop culture phrases can be trademarked — it all depends on the context, according to Craig.
The point of a trademark is to differentiate the products or services of one brand from those of another, she explains. So a word like "apple" can't be trademarked to sell fruit because it's simply describing the product, but to sell computers, it works just fine.
There are some other criteria that are considered during a trademark application, but Craig says that because "bruh" isn't describing the product in this case, the word could reasonably function as a trademark.
But trademarking something doesn't mean you own it outright, and experts say the "bruh" clothes on Etsy might not necessarily be infringing just because they use the word.
Paula Clancy, an intellectual property law partner at Gowling WLG, says for courts to determine if there was infringement, they would look at how the alleged infringer was using the trademark — either as a source of origin, to appear as though it was from a specific brand, or in an ornamental way, as part of a design.
Shirts with phrases like "Bruh, we back," which Karam had taken down, "might well fall within those exceptions," Clancy said — meaning they might not infringe.
Despite that, Karam says Etsy didn't give him a way to appeal its decision to take the products down.
For his part, Abbas said he reported listings to Etsy when he "reasonably believed" the listings might conflict with his trademark rights, and never intended to "prevent people from using the word in ordinary speech or everyday communication."
In an email to CBC News, an Etsy spokesperson said the platform assesses and removes items when it receives proper notice of infringement and said sellers are responsible for following all laws and site rules. The spokesperson said sellers should reach out to the person who made the initial complaint if they think their listing shouldn't have been removed.
Clancy says she understands why platforms like Etsy take these trademark takedown requests seriously, but she says a policy that doesn't allow for appeals poses a challenge for sellers who are unlikely to take on the expense of going through the courts.
Testing boundaries of trademark system
Clancy says cases like this are rare in Canada.
"Usually, we see the other way around. We see the infringers using marks without authorization," she said, noting that some people will try to piggyback on the reputation of an established brand.
But Craig worries that because trademark disputes can be so costly, especially for small businesses, cases of trademark squatting or over-enforcement might fly under the radar more often than we think.
She also points out that despite objections from Etsy sellers, the trademark holder in this case has walked a "careful line" that could still be potentially within the bounds of the law, given they were granted the trademark rights and licensing trademarks is allowed.
"This is really testing the sort of boundaries of that trademark system and exploiting some of the … policy weaknesses or loopholes within the system," Craig said.
She says tighter rules might be needed to prevent these kinds of situations. More care might be required in the initial stages of issuing trademarks, she says, especially when it comes to zeitgeist-y phrases where there might be more incentive to try to corner them.
Easier processes for challenging possible bad-faith trademarks, and changes to online marketplaces that allow sellers to appeal trademark takedowns, might also help, according to Craig.
She called it a "worst case scenario" to be in a place where everything is protected, nothing is actually litigated and "everything is automatically taken down as soon as a trademark owner claims their rights."
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