Billionaire Elon Musk’s decision to rebrand Twitter as X could be legally complicated: companies like Meta and Microsoft already have intellectual property rights in the same sense.
X is so widely used and cited in trademarks that it’s a candidate for legal challenges – and the company formerly known as Twitter may face problems of its own defending its X brand in the future.
“There’s a 100 percent chance someone will sue Twitter because of this,” said trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who said he counted nearly 900 active U.S. trademark registrations already covering the letter X in a variety of industries.
musk social media network Twitter renamed X on Monday and unveiled a new logo for the social media platform, a stylized black-and-white version of the letter.
Trademark owners – who protect things like brand names, logos and slogans that identify the origin of goods – can claim infringement when using a different brand designation would cause consumer confusion. The remedial measures range from damages to a ban on use.
Microsoft has owned an X trademark in connection with communications about her since 2003 Xbox video game system. metaplatforms – know subjects Platform is a new Twitter rival – owns a federal trademark registered in 2019 with a blue and white letter “X” for areas such as software and social media.
Meta and Microsoft likely wouldn’t sue unless they feel threatened that Twitter’s X will encroach on the brand equity they built in the letter, Gerben said.
The three companies did not respond to requests for comment.
Meta itself faced intellectual property challenges when it changed its name from Facebook. The company is facing trademark lawsuits filed by investment firm Metacapital and virtual reality company MetaX last year, and has settled another lawsuit over its new infinity symbol logo.
And if Musk manages to change the name, others could still claim “X.”
“Given the difficulty of protecting a single letter, particularly one as commercially popular as ‘X,’ Twitter’s protections will likely be limited to graphics very similar to the X logo,” said Douglas Masters, trademark attorney at law firm Loeb & Loeb.
“The logo doesn’t have much distinctiveness, so the protection will be very tight.”
Insiders previously reported that Meta owns an X-brand, and attorney Ed Timberlake tweeted that Microsoft also has one.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
(This story was not edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
