GoKawiilThis case involves Project Bluebird, a social media service previously named “twitter.new” and renamed to tweet.app immediately after this ruling (for reasons this post makes obvious). Project Bluebird’s service is designed to reimagine the Twitter service that Musk imploded when he morphed Twitter into X. Project Bluebird claims X has abandoned the TWITTER, TWEET and Bird Logo trademarks. In 2025, Project Bluebird filed ITU applications for TWITTER and TWEET.
Citing the following evidence, the court says X hasn’t abandoned the TWITTER marks:
X Corp.’ s current listing of the X app on the Apple App Store from which users can learn about the X platform and download the platform’s app to their phones [says] “Welcome to X (formerly known as Twitter), your trusted digital town square where conversations unfold in real time, and the world connects through breaking news, live events, podcasts, and everything in between.”…The listing therefore constitutes evidence of bona fide use of the Twitter-formative marks.
The court cites several cases endorsing “formerly known as” references as ongoing trademark use. The court explains:
the parenthetical identifies and distinguishes X Corp.’s platform as the Twitter platform X Corp. acquired from Twitter, Inc. and is rebranding as X. By virtue of the parenthetical, the listing is telling customers that what they knew as Twitter is now X and can be accessed by downloading the X app from the Apple App Store.
The court is right that X is using TWITTER to distinguish itself from its competitors, in the sense that consumers can identify and engage with X based on any residual goodwill they have towards Twitter. (At this point I’m still amaze any residual goodwill still exists towards X/Twitter. It’s all badwill to me). At the same time, X has made it emphatically clear that it does not intend to promote the TWITTER mark in the future other than to capture that residual goodwill. I could easily have seen the court reaching the opposite conclusion that the “formerly known as” reference isn’t actually trademark usage, at least when Musk has so publicly and prominently repudiated the mark.
I’d analogize the “formerly known as” references to a corporate webpage recounting a company’s past names. Telling the company’s history shouldn’t act as trademark usage of those legacy brands. If a corporate webpage can simpy mention deprecated brand names and thereby prevent abandonment of those marks, then the abandonment doctrine doesn’t exist any more.
In contrast, the court says the TWEET trademark and the Bird Logo are likely abandoned based on the following evidence:
“neither the Tweet mark nor the Bird logo appears in X Corp.’ s listing of the X app on the Apple App Store.”
“X Corp. conceded (eventually) at the April hearing that the Tweet mark and Bird logo are nowhere to be found on x.com’s home page.”
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