Elon Musk’s X is suing to retain ownership of the Twitter trademark after a US startup filed a petition to take over the iconic name.
According to Reuters, X has filed a lawsuit in Delaware District Court against Operation Bluebird, which wants to revive the original Twitter after Musk acquired and rebranded the popular social media platform.
In a petition filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Operation Bluebird argues that X effectively abandoned the “Twitter” and “Tweet” trademarks across the platform, meaning they should be up for grabs. But in its own lawsuit, X accuses the startup of “brazenly attempting to steal the world-famous TWITTER brand.”
“Bluebird’s plan to ‘bring back’ and ‘reclaim Twitter’ fails to account for one major flaw: the TWITTER brand is alive and well, owned by X Corp., and is not ripe for the picking,” the complaint adds.
X says the trademark is still in use because “each day, more than four million users access the X platform through the TWITTER.com domain,” while many consumers still refer to the platform as Twitter. (In October, however, X said it was moving to “retire the Twitter domain.”)
“Simply put, a rebrand is not an abandonment of trademark rights,” the lawsuit says. It also alleges that Operation Bluebird has been engaging in trademark infringement for creating a site at Twitter.new to promote its upcoming Twitter revival. In response, X is urging the court to issue an order blocking Operation Bluebird’s activities, including forcing the USPTO to deny Operation Bluebird’s petition for the Twitter and Tweet trademarks.
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As News notes, X also revised its terms of service to say, “Nothing in the Terms gives you a right to use the X name or Twitter name or any of the X or Twitter trademarks.” Previously, the terms of service had scrubbed all mention of Twitter.
The Operation Bluebird founders—Stephen Coates, a former lawyer for Twitter before Musk’s takeover, and trademark attorney Michael Peroff—have been trolling X’s lawsuit by quoting lyrics from the Beatles. “Was it something we said?” Peroff wrote. “‘You say, ‘Goodbye”’and I say, ‘Hello, hello, hello.’”
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I’ve been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I’m currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.
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