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Elon Musk kicked off the Twitter rebrand yesterday, changing the name of the social network and issuing a new logo. Twitter is set to wave goodbye, while ‘X’ is set to take over. There’s just one problem, though, Microsoft, Meta, and hundreds of other companies own rights to Twitter’s new name.
Microsoft, Meta, and various other companies own rights to Twitter’s new name
This report comes from Reuters, and it could seriously mess up Elon Musk’s plans. It seems like ‘X’ is widely used and cited in trademarks, which opens the door for various lawsuits down the road.
In fact, a trademark attorney, Josh Gerben, said the following: “There’s a 100% chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody”. He’s fully convinced the company will get sued if it proceeds down that road.
That same attorney counted almost 900 active US trademark registrations that cover the letter X. That goes for various industries, he noted, not just tech, of course.
As already mentioned, both Microsoft and Meta own this trademark. Microsoft has been in its possession since 2003, and it’s related to communications about its Xbox video-game system. Meta, on the other hand, owns a federal trademark registered in 2019. It covers a blue-and-white letter ‘X’ for software and social media.
Using the ‘X’ name opens the company for various lawsuits
The aforementioned attorney said that neither of those companies is likely to sue, unless their brand feels threatened directly. There are various other companies with similar ownerships out there, though, and the chances that some of them will sue are high.
“Given the difficulty in protecting a single letter, especially one as popular commercially as ‘X’, Twitter’s protection is likely to be confined to very similar graphics to their X logo”, said Douglas Masters, a trademark attorney. He also added: “The logo does not have much distinctive about it, so the protection will be very narrow”.
Things could get really messy for Elon Musk and Twitter aka ‘X’ down the road.
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