According to TheRegister.com, X Corp, the company owned by Elon Musk, has filed a lawsuit against a startup called Operation Bluebird over the “Twitter” trademark. The suit, filed in December 2024, comes a week after Bluebird announced it had applied to claim the abandoned Twitter brand. Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion in 2022 and rebranded it to X in 2023, ditching the bird logo and name. X’s legal complaint explicitly states that “Twitter never left” and is still owned by X Corp, noting that over 4 million users daily still access the platform through the Twitter.com domain. The lawsuit demands a halt to Bluebird’s trademark application, seeks damages, and asks the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to invalidate the claim.
The Strategic Admission
Here’s the thing: this lawsuit is a massive, unforced admission of failure. For over a year, Musk and his team have pushed the “X” brand with relentless, almost comical intensity. They changed the signage, updated the app icon, and scrubbed “tweet” from official communications. But now, in a legal document, they’re basically arguing that the rebrand hasn’t worked at all. They’re literally using the enduring strength of the “Twitter” brand as their primary legal weapon. It’s completely backwards. The complaint reads like a user revolt manifesto, listing all the ways people stubbornly refuse to adopt “X.” So much for moving fast and breaking things—sometimes the things you break are your own multi-billion dollar acquisitions.
Why Go on the Offensive?
So why sue? They could have just quietly contested the trademark filing. I think this is about control and precedent. Letting some random startup swoop in and officially own “Twitter” would be a humiliation too deep for Musk to stomach. It would also create a massive, confusing liability. Imagine if another company could legally sell “Twitter” branded merchandise or, worse, launch a competing service under that name. The lawsuit is a defensive scorched-earth policy. They’re saying, “We might not be using this brand, but you definitely can’t have it.” It’s the corporate equivalent of keeping your old car in the driveway on blocks so the neighbors can’t take it, even though you never drive it.
A Brand in Limbo
What we’re witnessing is a brand in purgatory. “Twitter” is commercially dead at the corporate level but very much alive in the global cultural lexicon. That’s a dangerous and expensive place to be. It creates a permanent anchor dragging against the “X” vision. Every time someone says “tweet,” it reinforces the old identity. This lawsuit freezes that ambiguity in place legally, but does nothing to resolve it in the real world. The core business challenge remains: can you force a top-of-mind brand change on hundreds of millions of people? The market, and now X’s own lawyers, are shouting the answer. But acknowledging you have a problem is the first step, right? Even if you have to sue someone to do it.
