Elon Musk has been left with egg on his face after his Twitter rebrand saw him use a letter already trademarked by Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.
Experts reckon that both the Facebook parent company and Microsoft already have intellectual property rights for the letter X, despite Musk choosing the character as the social network's new name.
The warning comes after Musk relaunched the popular social media site on Monday (July 24) as he pushes to revamp it into an "everything" app.
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Musk’s Twitter takeover came nine months ago and has been divisive among users following wholesale changes to the structure of the site.
The world’s second-richest man bought the site for £34bn and he now has ambitions to model it into a site more reminiscent of China's WeChat.
The mission is to "transform the global town square" according to Linda Yaccarino, the X chief executive – although there may be bumps along the way.
Speaking toReuters,US trademark lawyer Josh Gerben predicted: “There’s a 100 per cent chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody.”
He added that in the US there are already around 900 active trademark registrations that incorporate the letter X.
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A blue-and-white coloured X is already a registered trademark of Meta under the category of “social networking services in the fields of entertainment, gaming and application development”.
The Daily Star has contacted both X and Meta regarding the situation.
Microsoft also has a trademark of the symbol X due to its popular Xbox games console.
Speaking to the Independent, Matthew Harris, a trademark lawyer with Pinsent Masons, said: “The very essence of trademark registration is obtaining an exclusive right to the brand that is registered.
“It may be difficult to obtain for Elon Musk under the ‘X’ rebrand, not to mention the difficulty, should he obtain registered protection, in trying to enforce any registered rights in ‘X’ against other brands using a similar name.”
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