Elon Musk’s Company X has updated its terms of service to indicate it still claims the “Twitter” trademark. The move to add this detail to the company’s terms follows the announcement by a Virginia-based startup that recently filed to trademark the term “Twitter.”
Startup Operation Bluebird claims that X has abandoned the “Twitter” brand by changing the name of the social networking service to “X”. In a petition filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Dec. 2, the company pointed to a July 23, 2023 post by X owner Musk declaring that the social network would soon be “saying goodbye to the Twitter brand.”
Company X is currently contesting this claim with its own counterclaim. (A copy of the filing was shared with TechCrunch through IP trademark law firm Gerben IP, but has not yet been posted on PACER as of this publication.) In the filing, X says it continues to exclusively own the Twitter and Tweet trademarks, as well as the Bluebird logo.
Since filing the petition asking for its cancellation, Operation Bluebird has been collecting potential user sign-ups for its own social network on a website called Twitter.new. The effort is being led by two lawyers, including Illinois-based founder Michael Peroff and Stephen Coates, who previously served as Twitter’s trademark attorney. Given their background, their claims that they plan to launch a new service to compete with X seem questionable. It’s likely that you want to obtain a trademark that has value in its own right.
Nevertheless, X takes no chances. The revised Terms of Use, effective January 15, 2026, states:
Nothing in these Terms gives you any right to use the X or Twitter names or any X or Twitter trademarks, logos, domain names, other distinctive brand features, and other proprietary rights, and you may not do so without our express written consent.
Previously, in this section, the term referred only to X. There was no mention of Twitter.
The terms also include other more minor updates, such as references related to EU law and generated content. X’s privacy policy has also been updated to include several references to age-guaranteed technology.
This article was updated with a link to the counterclaim after initial publication.
