A Virginia-based startup has petitioned the US Patent and Trademark Office to cancel X Corp‘s trademarks for “Twitter” and “tweet,” arguing that Elon Musk’s company abandoned the iconic brand when it rebranded to X.
Operation Bluebird filed the petition December 2, seeking permission to use the Twitter name for a rival social media platform called “twitter.new.” The petition comes from Stephen Coates, who served as Twitter’s Associate Director of Trademarks before becoming Operation Bluebird’s general counsel.
“X legally abandoned the TWITTER mark,” Coates said in a statement. He called the matter “straightforward” after X allegedly stopped using the Twitter trademark commercially.
Operation Bluebird argues X Corp abandoned the brand completely after Musk’s 2023 post stating that X would “bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.” X completed its migration from twitter.com to x.com on May 17, 2024, and removed the blue bird logo from all platforms.
Trademark law presumes abandonment when a company stops using a mark for three years. X Corp renewed its Twitter trademark registration in 2023, but the renewal came as the company actively eliminated the brand from its platforms.
Josh Gerben, an intellectual property attorney not involved in the dispute, said X faces obstacles defending trademarks it no longer uses. However, he noted that X could attempt to block Operation Bluebird’s commercial use citing “residual goodwill” — the continued public association between Twitter and X Corp.
If successful, Operation Bluebird plans to launch twitter.new as a new social network, potentially by late 2026. Michael Peroff, an Illinois-based attorney involved with Operation Bluebird, said existing Twitter alternatives like Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky have not replicated Twitter’s former cultural impact. “We haven’t seen anything yet that matches the scale or cultural impact the old Twitter had,” he said.
X Corp has until early February to respond to the petition.
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