What Companies Are Doing To Secure Their Trademarks in Response to Twitter’s Name Change?
Elon Musk’s plan to rename Twitter as X may face legal complexities due to existing intellectual property rights held by companies like Meta and Microsoft for the same letter.
X is so widely used and borrowed in trademarks that it’s a candidate for legal challenges — and the company formerly known as Twitter could face its own problems defending its X brand in the future.
“There’s a 100% chance that someone will sue Twitter over this,” said trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who said he counted nearly 900 active U.S. trademark registrations that already cover the letter X in many industries.
Musk renamed social media Twitter as X on Monday and unveiled a new logo for the social media platform, a stylized black and white version of the letter.
Trademark owners — who protect trademarks, logos and slogans that identify the source of goods — can claim infringement if other brands cause confusion among consumers. The means of compensation vary from monetary damages to the prohibition of use.
Since 2003, Microsoft has owned the X trademark associated with communications about its Xbox video game system. Meta Platforms — whose Threads platform is a new Twitter competitor — owns a federal trademark registered in 2019 covering a blue-and-white “X” for industries such as software and social media.
Meta and Microsoft are unlikely to sue unless they feel threatened by Twitter’s X infringing on the brand equity they built in the letter, Gerben said.
The three companies did not respond to requests for comment.
Meta itself drew intellectual property challenges when it changed its name from Facebook. Last year, investment company Metacapital and virtual reality company MetaX filed trademark lawsuits and a settlement over the new infinity symbol logo.
And if Musk manages to change the name, others can still claim the “X” for themselves.
“Because it’s difficult to protect a single letter, especially one as commercially popular as ‘X’, Twitter’s protection is likely to be limited to graphics very similar to their X logo,” said Douglas Masters, a trademark attorney at the law firm Loeb & Loeb.
“There’s not much that stands out in the logo, so the cover becomes very narrow.”
Insider previously reported that Metal was an X trademark, and attorney Ed Timberlake tweeted that Microsoft had one as well.
