A Delaware federal judge has issued a split ruling in the trademark fight between Elon Musk’s X Corp and a startup that sought to launch a rival social network under the Twitter name. U.S. District Court Judge Colm F. Connolly granted X’s motion for a preliminary injunction barring Operation Bluebird from using the “Twitter” trademark, but denied the injunction regarding the “Tweet” mark and the Twitter bird logo, finding the startup was likely to prove X had abandoned those assets.
Operation Bluebird, a Virginia-based company, originally launched under the name Twitter.now. Following the ruling, it has since rebranded its website as Tweet.app and opened to the public, leaning into the “tweet” terminology the court said X had likely let go of.
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A legal battle over abandoned trademarks
The dispute centers on whether X Corp’s sweeping rebrand from Twitter to X in 2023 constituted abandonment of its legacy trademarks. The startup’s founders — Michael Peroff, an Illinois-based lawyer, and Stephen Coates, a former trademark lawyer at Twitter — argue that X’s decision to stop using the marks made them available for public use.
In his opinion, Judge Connolly wrote that Operation Bluebird was “likely to succeed in proving both that X Corp. discontinued the bona fide use of the Tweet mark and Bird logo and that it intends not to resume the use of the marks.” However, the court sided with X on eight other Twitter-related marks, including the core “Twitter” name itself.
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“They kept the word. They let go of the bird, and they let go of the tweet,” Coates, who serves as president of Operation Bluebird, said in an announcement about the rebrand shared via email with TechCrunch. “A tweet was never a corporation. It’s one person saying something. That word survived three years of a company trying to replace it, because the public declined to stop using it. We think that tells you who it belongs to.”
Tweet.app launches with paid handle reservations
Despite its legal framing, the company’s stated mission is less about building a novel platform and more about reclaiming what Musk discarded. The homepage of Tweet.app explicitly says its purpose is to go back and pick up what Musk dropped when he renamed the platform and “threw the bird away on his way out.”
Given the legal backgrounds of its founders, the assertion that they intend to build a new social network has drawn skepticism. Observers suggest the real play may be acquiring trademarks that hold independent value. Still, Tweet.app is going through the motions of a launch, opening up to users in early testing.
The company told TechCrunch that more than 172,000 people requested a handle on the site before launch — demand likely fueled by lingering public affinity for the Twitter brand. Notably, the startup is charging users $20 to reserve their handle and join the network, a fee that likely helps cover its legal expenses.
What’s next in the trademark case
The court’s decision is not final. The preliminary injunction is an interim measure, and the case will proceed to determine whether X Corp ultimately retains rights to any of the Twitter marks given its rebrand. The outcome could have broader implications for how companies manage trademark portfolios during major rebranding efforts.
For X Corp, the ruling is a partial victory — it protects the core “Twitter” name from direct use by a competitor. But the court’s willingness to entertain the abandonment argument on “Tweet” and the bird logo signals that Musk’s company may face continued legal exposure over the trademarks it stopped using in 2023.
For Operation Bluebird, the path forward is now clearer, at least temporarily. The startup can operate as Tweet.app while the case winds through the courts, though the founders’ ultimate intentions — building a social network or securing valuable intellectual property — remain a subject of debate.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or legal advice. The trademark dispute involves ongoing litigation, and outcomes are subject to change as the case progresses.
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