Billionaire Elon Musk's decision to rebrand Twitter as X could be complicated legally: companies including Meta and Microsoft already have intellectual property rights to the same letter.

it seems a big lawsuit is in the making, who knows what might happen next

  • stopthatgirl7@kbin.social
    28·
    1 year ago

    Here’s another fun one for you, too sore how much of an international mess this is.

    The second largest market for Twitter is Japan. The legal entity for Twitter in Japan is “Twitter Japan.” So, seems like they’d charge it to “X Japan,” right?

    Well, no. Because the trademark for X Japan is owned by a very famous Japanese rock band called X Japan. One of the founding members, Yoshiki, already tweeted in English and Japanese that the name is trademarked. Twitter Japan absolutely can not change its name to “X Japan” unless they want to be slapped with a lawsuit. So what are they going to call it? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

  • Tibert@compuverse.ukEnglish
    241·
    1 year ago

    Nah. It’s pretty much a stupid article.

    You cannot own a letter. However if the brand is too close to another, there could be something to base a lawsuit on.

    Given the difficulty in protecting a single letter, especially one as popular commercially as ‘X’, Twitter’s protection is likely to be confined to very similar graphics to their X logo," said Douglas Masters, a trademark attorney at law firm Loeb & Loeb.

    “The logo does not have much distinctive about it, so the protection will be very narrow.”

    Insider reported earlier that Meta had an X trademark, and lawyer Ed Timberlake tweeted that Microsoft had one as well.

    As it’s stated in the article, meta, Microsoft and hundred own a trademark. Which means a very interesting thing : This article is s*

    Why didn’t Microsoft and meta go after the 100 other companies who have a “trademark” on the letter x?

    You can’t own a letter.

    • effingjoe@kbin.social
      191·
      1 year ago

      Trademark infringement, as opposed to copyright infringement, is all about customer confusion. If my vacuum repair show is called 𝕏, then it’s not likely to cause customer confusion if a sandwich shop opens up and brands themselves as 𝕏.

      This may be why there are so many different X trademarks, and why none of them “went after” each other.

      If I remember correctly, Meta’s does pertain to social media, but as far as I know they’re not using it, so it might get messy there.

      Also, in case it’s not clear. The 𝕏 is just a normal unicode character. Dude couldn’t even be bothered to pay someone to make a logo for him.

  • Decipher0771@lemmy.caEnglish
    8·
    1 year ago

    Yknow, if that assholes goal was to make SpaceX, X, and rename Tesla to CarX that might actually make sense

    • Cloudless ☼@feddit.ukEnglish
      51·
      1 year ago

      Tesla: Xela

      The Boring Company: The Xoring Company

      Neuralink: Neurax

      StarLight: StarX

      SolarCity: SolarX

      (as suggested by Bing Chat)

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I bet he can’t legally change Tesla to X for one reason or another. And there used to be a car rental company called Car-X. I wouldn’t be shocked if he can’t change the name because of that.

    • expatriado@lemmy.worldEnglish
      810·
      1 year ago

      i think musk is trying to shift tweeter to the right, and one of the ways to make look as a new place is by rebranding, so those are the people he is trying to attract