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Elon Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter just to gut its famed verification, oversee a rapid rise in hate speech, and change its name to X within less than a year.
The problem with Musk’s latest hare-brained scheme, however, is that Meta — the company owned by Musk’s “rival” Mark Zuckerberg — apparently owns the copyright to the letter X as it pertains to “online social networking services.”
Speaking to Reuters, trademark attorney Josh Gerben said there is a “100% chance” that Twitter gets sued over the name change.
Microsoft since 2003 has owned an X trademark related to communications about its Xbox video-game system. Meta Platforms – whose Threads platform is a new Twitter rival – owns a federal trademark registered in 2019 covering a blue-and-white letter “X” for fields including software and social media.
Meta and Microsoft likely would not sue unless they feel threatened that Twitter’s X encroaches on brand equity they built in the letter, Gerben said. [via Reuters]
Meta isn’t the only party with a trademark on the letter X, as Gerben told Reuters that he counted “nearly 900 active U.S. trademark registrations that already cover the letter X in a wide range of industries.”
According to various analysts and brand agencies, Musk’s decision to change Twitter’s name to X has wiped out anywhere from $4 to $20 billion in brand value, reports Fortune.
Meta and Twitter have been sharing headlines for a few weeks now, as Musk publicly challenged Zuckerberg to a cage match, which led to Zuckerberg actually accepting. In the weeks since, the pair have been training with MMA fighters and having been making sure photos of their sessions make their way onto the internet.