Elon Musk’s latest rebranding exercise involving Twitter can be a stroke of genius or a whimsical activity. For now, it looks like the latter. New rechristened social media platform X can face legal complications mainly because companies like Meta and Microsoft already possess identical intellectual property rights.
X can be a potential target of legal challenges due to its wide usage and citation in trademarks. What was known as Twitter earlier could face its own issues in an effort to defend its brand X in the future.
Trademark attorney Josh Gerben said that there is a cent percent chance of Twitter getting sued by somebody for this name. Josh has found that the letter X is already covered by roughly 900 active U.S trademark registrations across a range of businesses. Musk announced the rebranding of Twitter as X on Monday unveiling the new logo which is a stylized black-and-white version of the letter.
Trademark owners can file an infringement action if it confuses the customers. The options for relief include monetary damages and prohibiting use.
Microsoft has owned the X trademark since 2003 which is used in communications pertaining to Xbox video-game system. Meta Platforms also owns a federal trademark which was registered in 2019 which had blue-and-white letter “X” for fields including software and social media.
If Microsoft and Meta would feel that Twitter’s X is a threat to them and might encroach on brand equity, there is a possibility of them suing Twitter. Meta had earlier faced intellectual property challenges when it changed its name from Facebook.
Even if Musk succeeds in changing the name of the platform, others can still claim “X”. A trademark attorney at law firm Loeb & Loeb, Douglas Masters, said that there is difficulty in protecting a single letter which is otherwise also commercially popular, Twitter’s protection can possibly be confined to very similar graphics to their X logo. Since the logo does not have much distinction in itself, the protection will be very narrow.
