Billionaire Elon Musk’s resolution to rebrand Twitter as X may very well be sophisticated legally: corporations together with Meta and Microsoft have already got mental property rights to the identical letter.
X is so extensively used and cited in logos that it’s a candidate for authorized challenges – and the corporate previously often known as Twitter might face its personal points defending its X model sooner or later.
“There’s a 100% chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody,” mentioned trademark lawyer Josh Gerben, who mentioned he counted practically 900 energetic US trademark registrations that already cowl the letter X in a variety of industries.
Musk renamed social media community Twitter as X on Monday and unveiled a brand new emblem for the social media platform, a stylized black-and-white model of the letter.
Owners of logos – which shield issues like model names, logos and slogans that establish sources of products – can declare infringement if different branding would trigger shopper confusion. Remedies vary from financial damages to blocking use.
Microsoft since 2003 has owned an X trademark associated to communications about its Xbox video-game system. Meta Platforms – whose Threads platform is a brand new Twitter rival – owns a federal trademark registered in 2019 overlaying a blue-and-white letter “X” for fields together with software program and social media.
Meta and Microsoft possible wouldn’t sue until they really feel threatened that Twitter’s X encroaches on model fairness they constructed within the letter, Gerben mentioned.
The three corporations didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Meta itself drew mental property challenges when it modified its identify from Facebook. It faces trademark lawsuits filed final 12 months by funding agency Metacapital and virtual-reality firm MetaX, and settled one other over its new infinity-symbol emblem.
And if Musk succeeds in altering the identify, others nonetheless might declare ‘X’ for themselves.
“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,” mentioned Douglas Masters, a trademark lawyer at regulation agency Loeb & Loeb.
“The logo does not have much distinctive about it, so the protection will be very narrow.”
Insider reported earlier that Meta had an X trademark, and lawyer Ed Timberlake tweeted that Microsoft had one as nicely.
Source web site: www.hindustantimes.com
