Starting up as Twitter.new?
Imagine how much easier it would be if you could launch your start up with a name that’s already well known.
That’s exactly what Operation Bluebird, a U.S. startup, is hoping to do. The company is intending to launch its social network under the name twitter.new.
Operation Bluebird’s General Counsel, Stephen Coates, a former Twitter trademark lawyer, is behind the initiative.
He has filed an application to register ‘Twitter’ at the U.S Patent and Trademark Office, along with a petition to cancel the existing ‘Twitter’ and ‘Tweet’ registrations belonging to Elon Musk’s X Corp.
His argument is that X has effectively abandoned those marks by rebranding the platform and is no longer using them in commerce. As such, he believes it is a “straightforward” matter to cancel Musk’s registrations.
When Musk publicly declared in 2023 that the Twitter brand would be retired, he signaled a broader shift: so the rebranded X no longer features Twitter’s famous blue bird logo, and the twitter.com URL now only redirects to x.com. The scale of change creates difficulties for X if it wants to defend its ownership of the Twitter trademarks.
While it’s likely Musk will lose the trademark case in the USPTO, he has the resources to engage in costly, time consuming litigation (even if he would ultimately lose the case) as a way of putting a stop to Operation Bluebird’s plans.
Whether he will do so, depends on whether he fears the competition from a rival platform.
Twitter is a famous trademark – few marks achieve such a status. So, it’s unsurprising that Operation Bluebird wants to adopt the name for itself. If it’s able to do so, it will need a new visual identity as Elon Musk’s X Corp likely owns the copyright in the famous blue bird logo. It should be easy enough to commission a new replacement bird though.
It will be interesting to see whether X will try to block Operation Bluebird's commercial use of a name that Elon Musk so cavalierly discarded a few years ago.
The case demonstrates the importance of use and proof of use of a trademark. Otherwise, it is vulnerable to attack, and cancellation.
