ALBAWABA – Rebranding Twitter to X is likely to stir up yet another kerfuffle for Billionaire Elon Musk, as many companies including Meta and Microsoft already have intellectual property rights to brands with an X in their names, news agencies reported.
"There's a 100 percent chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody," trademark attorney Josh Gerben told Reuters.
He claimed to have counted nearly 900 active United States (US) trademark registrations that already cover the letter X in a wide range of industries, the news agency reported.
Insider reported earlier that Meta had an X trademark, and lawyer Ed Timberlake tweeted that Microsoft had one as well.
Microsoft has owned the X trademark related to communications and its Xbox video-game system since 2003. While Meta Platforms too owns a federal trademark registered in 2019 covering a blue-and-white letter "X" for fields including software and social media, Reuters confirmed.
However, Meta and Microsoft are not very likely to sue unless they feel threatened that Twitter's X encroaches on the brand equity they built in the letter, Gerben said.
Meta itself drew intellectual property challenges when it changed its name from Facebook.
The company is facing trademark lawsuits filed last year by investment firm Metacapital and virtual-reality company MetaX, and has already settled another over its new infinity-symbol logo.
But if Musk succeeds in changing the name, others still could claim 'X' for themselves.
It is difficult to protect a single letter, especially one as popular commercially as 'X', Douglas Masters, a trademark attorney at law firm Loeb & Loeb, told Reuters.
“Twitter's protection is likely to be confined to very similar graphics to their X logo," he explained. Adding that "the logo does not have much distinctive about it, so the protection will be very narrow".
Accordingly, the only form of protection Musk can afford to give his relaunched X brand is one that is effectively limited to the brand’s graphics, and nothing else.
Another reason why the protection will likely not go beyond the graphics is that even should Musk miraculously win a lawsuit over his new Twitter X brand in the US, he will not be able to in other countries.
There are plenty of brands and trademarks registered with X as a component of the brand.
In Japan, for instance, there is a famous band called X Japan, whose slogan is “We are X”, according to their official website.
Other brands with an X
Brands with an X are extremely popular, with some dating back decades, such as Xerox.
Not to mention chipmaker Kingston’s HyperX brand, whose X is an important part of the design.
Of course, there are sports-related brands that have X as integral to their trademarks.
Movie, TV brands with an X
