Federal Judge Colm F. Connolly handed Elon Musk's X a split ruling in a trademark fight with Operation Bluebird, a startup that wanted to revive the Twitter brand. The court granted X's preliminary injunction over eight Twitter-related marks, blocking the "Twitter" name, but denied it for the "Tweet" mark and the Twitter bird logo, saying the startup would likely prove X "discontinued the bona fide use" of both and intends not to resume.
Founded by lawyers Michael Peroff and Stephen Coates, a former Twitter trademark attorney, the Virginia-based startup originally launched as Twitter.now. Its homepage openly says its purpose is to pick up what Musk dropped when he renamed the platform X and "threw the bird away." It has now relaunched as Tweet.app and opened to the public, charging $20 to reserve a handle; more than 172,000 people had requested one before launch.
"They kept the word. They let go of the bird, and they let go of the tweet," Coates said. "A tweet was never a corporation. It's one person saying something. We think that tells you who it belongs to."
The ruling is preliminary; the case continues to determine whether X retains rights to any Twitter-era marks. For now, the word and the bird have a new home.
