Court lets Twitter rival keep 'tweet' as judge finds X abandoned the mark
What's the deal? A federal court in Delaware has ruled that startup Operation BluebirdDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → cannot use the "Twitter" name for its rival social network, but can use the word "tweet" and the Twitter bird logo, which Elon MuskDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →'s X likely abandoned. The Virginia-based startup has since rebranded from Twitter.new to Tweet.app and launched to the public.
Why now? The dispute follows Musk's 2023 rebrand of Twitter to X, which retired the bird logo and the Twitter name across most of the platform. Operation Bluebird's homepage says its purpose is to reclaim what Musk "threw the bird away on his way out."
What's the ruling? US District Court Judge Colm F. Connolly issued a split decision on X's request for a preliminary injunction. He granted it for eight Twitter-related marks but denied it for the "Tweet" mark and the bird logo, writing that Bluebird was "likely to succeed in proving" that X had "discontinued the bona fide use" of both and intends not to resume it.
Who's behind it? The effort is led by two lawyers: founder Michael Peroff, based in Illinois, and Stephen Coates, a former trademark lawyer at Twitter who now serves as president. "They kept the word. They let go of the bird, and they let go of the tweet," Coates said, arguing the public "declined to stop using it."
What's the endgame? Their legal backgrounds suggest the goal may be acquiring Twitter's abandoned trademarks rather than building a lasting network. Still, Tweet.app is opening to users in early testing, and the company says more than 172,000 people requested a handle before launch. It charges $20 to reserve a handle, which likely helps cover its legal bills.
What could go wrong? The decision is not final. The case will proceed to determine whether X still retains rights to any of the Twitter marks, given the company now operates as X in most places.
The signal: The ruling tests how far a rebrand goes in surrendering trademark rights. By dropping the name and logo that users kept using, X may have created an opening for others to claim the pieces it left behind.
Read more: TechCrunch, Reuters
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
