Elon Musk’s X Corp has secured a preliminary court order blocking social media startup Operation Bluebird from using the Twitter name and related word marks, although it lost its bid to retain rights to the platform’s bluebird logo.
US District Judge Colm Connolly said X was likely to prove that Bluebird’s use of “Twitter” would confuse consumers and infringe its trademarks. He rejected Bluebird’s argument that X had abandoned the Twitter trademark after Musk acquired the company for US$44 billion in 2022 and renamed it X, Reuters reported.
However, Connolly found that X had abandoned its rights to the word “Tweet” and the Twitter bird logo. He cited Musk’s previous statements that X would “bid adieu” to “all the birds” and “cut the Twitter logo off the building with blow torches.”
Operation Bluebird general counsel Stephen Coates said the startup would comply with the order and was “thrilled” by the ruling over the bird logo and “Tweet” mark. He said Bluebird would launch “tweet.app” later on Thursday.
Bluebird had asked the US Patent and Trademark Office in December to cancel X’s federal Twitter trademarks, arguing they had been abandoned. It separately applied to register its own Twitter mark.
X sued the startup later that month, arguing that its Twitter brand remained active and that Bluebird’s attempt to use the name amounted to trademark infringement.
The case, X Corp v. Operation Bluebird Inc, remains ongoing, with Connolly granting X’s request for a preliminary injunction over the Twitter word marks.
