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A new social media platform has filed a petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office to cancel the trademarks held by Twitter, aiming to acquire them itself. The startup, based in Virginia and called Operation Bluebird, claims that Elon Musk’s X Corp has abandoned these trademarks. On December 2, the company submitted its request, seeking permission to use “Twitter” and “tweet” for its upcoming platform, “twitter.new,” and also applied to trademark “Twitter.”
The petition was submitted by Stephen Coates, a former trademark attorney at Twitter who now serves as General Counsel for Operation Bluebird and runs a small law firm. Musk acquired Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion and rebranded the platform as X. Operation Bluebird asserts that since the rebranding, X has effectively “erased” the Twitter brand from its products, services, and marketing efforts.
In a post on X earlier in 2023, Musk mentioned plans to “say goodbye to the Twitter brand and, over time, to all the birds.” X has yet to respond publicly to the petition. Coates described the situation as straightforward, arguing that X has “legally abandoned the Twitter mark.” Unlike the original platform, the rebranded X does not display Twitter’s iconic blue bird logo, and the site has moved from twitter.com to x.com. Despite these changes, X’s 2023 renewal registration for the Twitter trademark was approved last year.
Josh Gerben, an intellectual property attorney not involved in the case, noted that if X no longer uses the trademarks, it could face challenges defending ownership. However, he said that even if the trademarks are canceled, X might still attempt to prevent Operation Bluebird from commercially using the Twitter name. Gerben also sees the challenge as an intriguing test of whether X is willing to protect a brand it no longer actively promotes or uses.
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