The Hundreds of "X" Trademarks Could Result in Legal Problems for Elon Musk's Rebranding of Twitter
As there are almost 900 active trademarks registrations for “X” in the United States.
Disputes over trademarks could be a major legal headache for Elon Musk as he rebrands Twitter to “X.”
Trademark attorney Josh Gerben told Reuters that there are almost 900 active trademarks registrations in the United States across numerous industries for the letter “X.” Some of these companies include big names such as Meta and Microsoft, with Meta registering a federal trademark in 2019 for a blue and white “X” for software and social media, and Microsoft owning the “X” trademark for its Xbox console since 2003.
“There’s a 100% chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody,” Gerben said, although he added that Microsoft and Meta will probably not sue unless they feel like Twitter’s rebranding is infringing on their trademarks.
Even if Musk successfully rebrands Twitter to X, however, other parties could still file for a trademark. “Given the difficulty in protecting a single letter, especially one as popular commercially as ‘X’, Twitter’s protection is likely to be confined to very similar graphics to their X logo,” Douglas Masters, a trademark attorney at law firm Loeb & Loeb, added. “The logo does not have much distinctive about it, so the protection will be very narrow.”
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