A startup called Operation Bluebird has filed a petition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) seeking to cancel X Corp.’s ownership of the “Twitter” and “Tweet” trademarks, arguing that the Elon Musk-owned company has abandoned the brands.
The petition claims that X has “legally abandoned its rights” to the Twitter trademarks and has no intention of resuming their use following the platform’s rebranding. Operation Bluebird also alleges that X has continued to submit false statements to the USPTO regarding its trademark use.
Operation Bluebird is led by Michael Peroff, an Illinois-based trademark and brand protection attorney, and Stephen Coates, a former associate director of trademarks at Twitter between 2014 and 2016. The startup has also filed a trademark application for “Twitter,” which it plans to use for a new social media platform called Twitter.new.
Under U.S. trademark law, a registration may be cancelled if a mark has not been used for three consecutive years or if the owner has discontinued its use without intent to resume. Operation Bluebird’s petition cites public statements by Musk and the redirection of Twitter.com traffic to X.com as evidence of abandonment.
Legal experts remain divided. While some argue that the rebranding supports claims of abandonment, others point to residual goodwill, noting that many users still refer to the platform as Twitter, and associate X with the Twitter logo and brand.
If Operation Bluebird is successful, it would still face the problem of an increasingly fractured social media landscape, with previous Twitter/X rivals shaping a series of niche markets rather than a single public square—see Bluesky, Gab, Mastodon, Parler, Threads, and more.
In 2023—when Musk renamed Twitter as X—concerns were also raised in Europe over potential trademark conflicts linked to the name change, suggesting that the rebrand could open multiple legal fronts for X Corp.
Just last week, on December 5th, Brussels hit Elon Musk’s X with a €120 million ($140 million) fine. The EU said it was penalizing X for failing to comply with transparency requirements, including the “deceptive design” of its blue checkmark.
In response, Musk had lashed out at the EU, declaring on X declaring on X that the bloc “should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries.”
