A small social media startup is trying to take over the Twitter name, arguing that Elon Musk’s X Corp has effectively abandoned it. The company, Operation Bluebird, filed a petition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on December 2 asking regulators to cancel the existing Twitter trademarks so it can claim them for its own platform, “twitter.new.” It also filed a new application to trademark the word “Twitter.”
Operation Bluebird’s general counsel, Stephen Coates, submitted the request. Coates once worked at Twitter as a trademark lawyer and now runs a private law firm. He said the move is simple: X no longer uses the Twitter brand in any real commercial way. Musk dropped the name after buying Twitter for $44 billion in 2022. By mid-2023, he had replaced the blue bird logo, shifted the platform to x.com, and openly stated that the company would “bid adieu to the Twitter brand.”
X has not commented on the petition. Coates insists the evidence speaks for itself, saying the company “legally abandoned” the Twitter mark after removing it from its products and marketing. Trademark experts say the case could be tricky for X. If a company no longer uses a trademark in commerce, it risks losing the right to it. Still, X may try to block Operation Bluebird from using the name even if regulators agree to cancel the old registrations.
The challenge now tests how far Musk’s company is willing to go to defend a brand it no longer displays. It also raises the question of whether a new platform can revive a name that once defined an era of online culture.
