Court frees TWEET and the bird logo — but X keeps its grip on TWITTER

A Delaware federal court has signaled that X abandoned two of Twitter’s most recognizable brand assets — the word ‘tweet’ and the blue bird logo — clearing a path for them to fall into the public domain. The ruling came in a preliminary injunction fight brought by Project Bluebird, a startup building a Twitter-style service that promptly renamed itself from twitter.new to tweet.app after the decision. Project Bluebird had filed intent-to-use applications for TWITTER and TWEET, arguing that Musk’s rebrand to X constituted abandonment of the old marks.

The court split the difference. It found X has not abandoned the TWITTER name because the company still leans on it commercially: the X app’s App Store listing greets users with ‘Welcome to X (formerly known as Twitter),’ which the judge treated as bona fide, goodwill-capturing trademark use. TWEET and the bird logo, by contrast, appear nowhere on x.com’s homepage or in the app listing, and X’s supporting evidence was thin or undated. Combined with Musk’s very public repudiation of the old branding, the court concluded X intends never to resume using them.

Because this is only a preliminary ruling, it isn’t the final word on the merits, but the direction is clear — and legally interesting. The commentator flags a real tension: if a ‘formerly known as’ aside is enough to keep a mark alive, the abandonment doctrine loses much of its force, and he expects TWITTER itself to eventually go the same way. For now, the practical upshot is that ‘tweet’ and the bird may soon be free for anyone to use, at least until Project Bluebird tries to lock them up again.