Elon Musk Could Face Lawsuits as Meta, Microsoft, and Others Own Rights to Twitter's New Name

For well over a decade, Twitter has connected people around the world and played a key role in citizen-led uprisings like the Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter movements. But Twitter as we know it is evidently disappearing, with owner Elon Musk ushering in the era of "X" starting on July 24.

There's just one problem: the letter "X" has nearly 900 active trademark registrations in the U.S. This includes tech companies like Meta—a direct X competitor—and Microsoft laying claim to the 24th letter of the alphabet.

"There's a 100 percent chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody," trademark attorney Josh Gerben told Reuters of the move. The hundreds of trademarks relate to the use of the letter X in a wide range of industries. The name change is already creating problems on its own site, as the company failed to secure the "@X" handle and posts are still referred to as "tweets."

Microsoft has owned an X trademark since 2003 in relation to its Xbox video game system. Meta, meanwhile, owns a federal trademark registered in 2019 for a blue-and-white letter "X" for industries including software and social media. In other words, forget about incorporating the old Twitter colorway into the new branding.

Gerben believes Meta and Microsoft likely wouldn't sue X Corp. unless they feel that Musk's X diminishes the brand equity the companies have established in the letter themselves. Still, even if Musk avoids a lawsuit from these tech giants, he wouldn't be totally out of the woods, as others could still claim "X" for their own use.

"Given the difficulty in protecting a single letter, especially one as popular commercially as 'X,' Twitter's protection is likely to be confined to very similar graphics to their X logo," Douglas Masters, a trademark attorney at law firm Loeb & Loeb, explained. "The logo does not have much distinctive about it, so the protection will be very narrow."

In this case, "X" might not mark the spot.