A federal court in Delaware has ruled on a trademark fight between Elon Musk’s X and a startup trying to launch a rival social network. The startup, Operation Bluebird, originally launched under the name Twitter.now, but the court barred it from using that name, siding with X on the core “Twitter” trademark. However, the court also found that X had likely abandoned two other, related trademarks: the word “tweet” and the Twitter bird logo, making them available to use. Operation Bluebird has since rebranded its website as Tweet.app, using the freed-up “tweet” name, and launched to the public.
The story of the Virginia-based startup isn’t really about building something unique; it’s about a company trying to get its hands on abandoned trademarks that X let go of. Even the homepage for the company clearly states its purpose is to go back and pick up what Elon Musk dropped when he renamed the town square as X, and “threw the bird away on his way out,” it says.
