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| Shouldn't this say: "Sign in to X"? |
by Susan Basko
The other day, Elon Musk announced that Twitter was now being called "X." A crude "X" design appeared on the site.
I have long-time twitter accounts. I was on twitter back when it was "twittr" and was like slack, a way to stay in touch with your small team on a project.
I am a lawyer who works trademarks, among other things, so the first thing I did was a Trademark database search on "X." My first impression after a quick search is that "X" is going to conflict with existing trademarks in many classes.
Twitter has dozens of carefully curated trademarks, accumulated over time. It seems wasteful to throw all that in the trash, for no particular reason.
Mr. Musk could decide to use X without registering it, so that the likely denial of the registration by the Trademark examiner does not cause a stir. However, it takes 8 months now for a trademark application to be assigned to an examiner, and by eight month from now, the story over at Twitter/ X could be totally different. He could also try to buy off those already using X in same or similar classes to pave the way for his own registration.
In any case, "X" is a really weak trademark since it is so generic and there are so many X trademarks already. I don't think EM listens to his lawyers, but if he did, they would tell him these same things.