Welcome to a very small and very out-of-schedule post on this blog. This is not your regular post, nor your usual content, but I HAD TO share this information.
In our previous post, we went over Elon Musk’s announcement of the rebranding of Twitter. Remember how I mentioned that maybe there was NO RESEARCH done here? Well, allow me to make my point:
Elon Musk cannot rebrand Twitter as X thanks to Meta Platforms INC.
The Issue with the rebranding
Back on May 25, 2017, Meta trademarked “X”. The trademark does cover a variety of things from “Computer software for broadcasting, transmitting, receiving, accessing, viewing, uploading, downloading, sharing, integrating, encoding, decoding, displaying, formatting, organizing, storing, caching, transferring and streaming of data, text, games, game content, digital media, images, music, audio, video, movies, and animations” to APIs, Advertising and Online Social Network Services.
Yes, you read that right.
While the Trademark consists of both, a Word Mark (the letter X itself) plus a white and blue X logo which is quite different to Elon’s proposal, it means nothing but TROUBLES for Elon’s desire to rebrand Twitter as X.
All Trademarks are public records and can be accessed via the USPTO Website HERE.
The current owner of Meta’s Trademark over X is Microsoft, but there are other companies that own “X” as a trademark under other classes. Chances are Twitter will get sued by someone over this.
The Legal Implications
I am by no means an attorney nor allowed to provide legal advice (and this is not legal advice in any shape or form), but renaming Twitter as “X” and using the word mark will imply a Trademark Infringement and will carry legal consequences for Twitter.
According to Upcounsel’s Website, the most common penalty for trademark infringement is an injunction or a cease and desist letter directing the infringer to stop using the trademarked material. It’s also possible for criminal or civil penalties to result from an intentional violation of trademark law, although this is rare.
From our perspective, the X rebranding has failed. Of course, there is still one option: a buyout. Going this route might cost Musk more than a couple of pennies – buying a Trademark is not an easy task and will imply negotiations between both parties.
What do you think the best course of action for Twitter/X is? Leave us a thought in the comments!
