Elon Musk’s X Corp on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against a startup after it moved to cancel X’s Twitter trademarks, claiming it wanted to “bring Twitter back” as a new social media platform.
Spokespeople and attorneys for X did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the complaint.
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022 and rebranded the social media platform to X. He said in a 2023 social media post that the company would “bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.”
Virginia-based Operation Bluebird asked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on December 2 to cancel X’s federal “Twitter” trademarks, arguing the company had abandoned them. Bluebird said that it wanted to use Twitter-related trademarks for a rival platform called “twitter.new,” and separately applied to register its own “Twitter” mark.
The petition was filed by Stephen Coates, a former Twitter trademark lawyer who now serves as Bluebird’s general counsel.
X told the Delaware court on Tuesday that it had not abandoned its Twitter trademark rights and that the brand “continues to persist in many ways.” The company said that millions of users still access the platform through twitter.com, users and businesses continue to refer to it as Twitter, and X still maintains and enforces its Twitter trademarks.
“Twitter is one of the world’s most recognized brands, and it belongs to X Corp,” the lawsuit said. “Simply put, a rebrand is not an abandonment of trademark rights.”
X also said that Bluebird’s Twitter platform would cause consumer confusion and requested an unspecified amount of monetary damages.
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