According to The Verge, last week a group called Operation Bluebird filed a petition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to cancel X Corp.’s ownership of the “Twitter” and “Tweet” trademarks, claiming the company legally abandoned the brand. Simultaneously, Operation Bluebird filed its own trademark application for “Twitter” as part of plans to launch a new site called Twitter.new. Now, X Corp. has filed a lawsuit against the group for trademark infringement, arguing its rebrand to X “is not an abandonment of trademark rights.” The lawsuit points out that as of December 11th, 2025, over four million users still accessed the platform via the twitter.com domain, which now redirects to x.com. X also notes users still call the site “Twitter” and posts “tweets,” and many websites still use the bird favicon when linking to it.
The Ghost of Brands Past
Here’s the thing: this lawsuit is less about legal nuance and more about a stark reality X can’t escape. You can change your name, your logo, and your entire corporate identity overnight. But you can’t force hundreds of millions of people to change their vocabulary. The lawsuit itself admits this! X is literally using the public’s refusal to adopt its new name as legal proof that the old trademark is still valid. It’s a bizarre, almost paradoxical position. “We killed the Twitter brand, but look, everyone still uses it, so it’s obviously not dead!” That’s a tough sell, even if the legal logic around “residual goodwill” might hold up in court.
A Crowded and Confusing Field
So what’s the real impact? For the competitive landscape, it creates more chaos. The social media space is already fragmented with X, Bluesky, Threads, and others vying for attention. Now imagine a new player, “Twitter.new,” entering the fray. The potential for user confusion is massive. Is that the real Twitter? A scam? A nostalgia play? For X, the immediate loser is clarity. Every ounce of energy spent fighting this legal battle is energy not spent improving the actual platform. And for Operation Bluebird, it’s a huge gamble. Even if they win the trademark fight, they’d inherit a name with immense baggage—both good and bad. They’d be starting at zero but carrying the weight of a billion-user legacy. Basically, it’s a mess for everyone involved.
