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A federal court in Delaware has ruled on a trademark fight between Elon Musk\u2019s X and a startup trying to launch a rival social network. The startup, Operation Bluebird, originally launched under the name Twitter.now<\/a>, but the court barred it from using that name, siding with X on the core \u201cTwitter\u201d trademark. However, the court also found that X had likely abandoned two other, related trademarks: the word \u201ctweet\u201d and the Twitter bird logo, making them available to use. Operation Bluebird has since rebranded its website as Tweet.app, using the freed-up \u201ctweet\u201d name, and launched to the public.<\/p>\n The story of the Virginia-based startup isn\u2019t really about building something unique; it\u2019s about a company trying to get its hands on abandoned trademarks that X relinquished. Even the homepage for the company clearly states its purpose is to go back and pick up what Elon Musk dropped when he renamed the town square as X, and \u201cthrew the bird away on his way out,\u201d it says.<\/p>\n The\u00a0effort is headed up<\/a>\u00a0by two lawyers, including founder\u00a0Michael Peroff,<\/a>\u00a0based in Illinois, and\u00a0Stephen Coates<\/a>, previously a trademark lawyer at Twitter. Given their legal backgrounds, their assertion that they\u2019re interested in building a new social network seems dubious. It\u2019s more likely they want to acquire Twitter\u2019s trademarks, which have value of their own.<\/p>\n Still, Tweet.app is at least going through the motions and opening up to users in early testing. The company told TechCrunch that more than 172,000 people requested a handle on the site before launch. This was likely in large part due to the affinity people still have for the brand name \u201cTwitter\u201d \u2014 a name the company now can\u2019t use.<\/p>\n Notably, the startup is charging users $20 to reserve their handle and join the social network, which likely helps cover its legal bills.<\/p>\n The court\u2019s decision on the matter is not final, we should note. U.S. District Court Judge Colm F. Connolly issued a split ruling on X\u2019s request for a preliminary injunction that sought to stop Operation Bluebird from using a series of Twitter trademarks that the startup says X had abandoned since its rebrand.<\/p>\n The judge granted X\u2019s motion for a preliminary injunction regarding eight Twitter-related marks, but denied it when it came to the Tweet mark and the Twitter bird logo.<\/p>\n In the judge\u2019s opinion, he wrote that Bluebird was \u201clikely to succeed in proving both that X Corp. discontinued the bona fide use of the Tweet mark and Bird logo and that it intends not to resume the use of the marks.\u201d <\/p>\n The case will proceed to determine whether or not X ultimately still retains rights to any of the Twitter marks, given that the company now goes by X in most places. <\/p>\n \u201cThey kept the word. They let go of the bird, and they let go of the tweet,\u201d wrote Coates, who is president of Operation Bluebird, in an announcement about the rebrand shared via email with TechCrunch. \u201cA tweet was never a corporation. It\u2019s one person saying something. That word survived three years of a company trying to replace it, because the public declined to stop using it. We think that tells you who it belongs to,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n