Billionaire Elon Musk’s decision to rename Twitter to X may be legally complicated. Other companies, including Microsoft and Meta Platforms, have intellectual property rights to the X. X is widely used and cited in trademarks, so the company may be forced to defend its logo in court in the future, Reuters reported.
“There’s a 100 percent chance that Twitter will get sued over this,” said trademark lawyer Josh Gerben. He said he counted nearly 900 active trademark registrations in the United States that already cover the letter X in a wide range of industries.
Musk, who bought Twitter last October for about $44 billion, renamed the social network X on Monday. He also showed off the new logo, which is just the letter X in black and white.
Trademarks protect things like brand names, logos and slogans that identify the sources of goods. Their owners can claim infringement protection if another brand misleads consumers. Remedies range from monetary damages to a decision to block use of the mark.
Microsoft has owned the trademark for the letter X since 2003
Since 2003, Microsoft has held the X trademark related to communications about its Xbox video game system. Meta Platforms, which earlier this month launched social network Threads, Twitter’s new rival, owns a federal trademark registered in 2019. This refers to the blue and white letter X for software or social media.
Meta itself has also faced intellectual property issues since it started using the name instead of Facebook. It faces trademark lawsuits filed last year by investment company Metacapital and virtual reality company MetaX.Another dispute was settled over its new logo symbolizing infinity.
“Given the difficulty of protecting a single letter, especially a commercially popular one like X, Twitter’s protection will likely be limited to graphics very similar to their X logo,” Douglas Masters, a trademark attorney at law firm Loeb & Loeb, told Reuters. “The logo is not very distinctive, so the protection will be very narrow,” he added.
That Meta owns a trademark on the letter X, by earlier on Insider. Lawyer Ed Timberlake tweeted that Microsoft also has one such brand. Meta and Microsoft are unlikely to file a lawsuit unless they feel threatened that the Twitter and X brands, respectively, are interfering with the brand value they have built, Gerben said.
Source: CTK
