Deciding to abandon one of the world’s best-known brands was one of a number of imaginative decisions made by Elon Musk when he purchased Twitter and renamed it X. Now a startup wants to revive the name, arguing that X corporation no longer has any use for the trademark.
The legal arguments could get interesting, especially given that one of those involved in the venture is Stephen Coates – Twitter’s former general counsel …
Startup wants to relaunch Twitter
Arstechnica reports that the startup has applied for the Twitter and Tweet trademarks to be cancelled.
A Virginia startup calling itself “Operation Bluebird” announced this week that it has filed a formal petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office, asking the federal agency to cancel X Corporation’s trademarks of the words “Twitter” and “tweet” since X has allegedly abandoned them.
“The TWITTER and TWEET brands have been eradicated from X Corp.’s products, services, and marketing, effectively abandoning the storied brand, with no intention to resume use of the mark,” the petition states. “The TWITTER bird was grounded.”
There is strong legal precedent for trademark protection being lost after the names have been abandoned by their original owners.
The plan is to launch a new social network at the domain twitter.new. This domain is already live and the company is inviting people to reserve their usernames now.
Reddit launches verification checkmarks
One of Musk’s other decisions, of course, was to abandon the use of blue checkmarks as verification of the ownership of notable Twitter accounts and instead turn it into a subscription product.
But the original usage of verification checkmarks has been adopted by other social networks, and Engadget reports that now Reddit is doing the same.
The company is beginning “a limited alpha test” of the feature with a small “curated” group of accounts that includes journalists from major media outlets like NBC News and the Boston Globe. Businesses that are already using an “official” badge, which Reddit started testing in 2023, will also now have a grey “verified” checkmark instead of the “official” label.
While it’s currently an invitation-only feature for high-visibility accounts, the company says it will in time be available to all. There are no perks and won’t be any specific requirements beyond your Reddit account being in good standing and not NSFW-related.
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