Elon Musk’s intention to redesign Twitter as X may be legally complicated: firms such as Meta and Microsoft already own trademark rights to the same letter.
X is so frequently used and mentioned in trademarks that it is ripe for legal challenges, and the firm previously known as Twitter may have its own troubles in the future protecting its X brand.
“There’s a 100% chance that Twitter will be sued over this,” said trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who noted that almost 900 existing US trademark registrations already cover the letter X in a variety of businesses.
On Monday, Musk rebranded the social media network Twitter to X and introduced a new logo for the platform, a stylized black-and-white rendition of the letter.
Owners of intellectual property, which protect things like brand names, logos, and slogans that identify the source of goods, can file infringement claims if alternative branding causes customer confusion. The remedies vary from monetary damages to the prohibition of usage.
Microsoft has controlled the X trademark for communications regarding their Xbox video-game system since 2003. Meta Platforms, whose Threads platform is a new Twitter competitor, has a federal trademark covering a blue-and-white letter “X” for industries such as software and social media that was registered in 2019.
According to Gerben, Meta and Microsoft are unlikely to litigate unless they feel scared that Twitter’s X infringes on the brand equity they developed in the letter.
Requests for comment were not returned by the three firms.
When Meta changed its name from Facebook, it faced intellectual property difficulties. Last year, investment firm Metacapital and virtual-reality business MetaX brought intellectual property cases against it, and it resolved another over its new infinity-symbol logo.
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