X Social Media alleges that Musk’s X confuses potential customers.
X Social Media is suing X, a social media company::Elon Musk’s X is being sued by a Florida company called X Social Media for alleged unfair competition and trademark violations that it says have resulted in lost revenue.
I like the fact that the article had to refer to the non-Musk site as XSM instead of its full name of 'X Social Media' because it would just make the article too confusing to use the proper name.
That perfectly illustrates the point.
I suppose it also means that if XSM lose the case because X is too generic, anyone can then set up a rival social media company also called X.
They can probably use the same logo too as it's just Unicode.
There is a good chance that there are A-W, Y and Z social media companies too. Some may be legit (eg. marketing on existing social media platforms), and others more for trademark squatting.
So is apple. Just because it's generic doesn't mean it's not protected by trademark law. Trademarks are also first come first serve, exclusive to a given industry (so you could call your company Apple or X, but it better be not in a business where it's already trademarked). They're also use it or lose it, and you basically have to sue others using it if you want to keep it.
Obviously the logo isn't just the character X, it's a character X in particular font. If they used the same one they would be violating their trademark.
It's too common a symbol for X.org to have much of a shot because they're not competitors. This "X Social Media" might have a stronger claim if they've actually used and defended a trademark specifically in the social space.
Ol' Musky just went "I want Twitter to be named X" and hoped reality would shape to his thoughts.
And now, some random person who made a shitty shell company for a few hundred bucks gets to get a couple mil because baby Elong Muskrat didn't bother to do his homework.
It was bound to happen eventually: a company has filed a lawsuit in federal court against Elon Musk’s X Corp. over its renaming of Twitter (via Reuters).
The company in question is X Social Media LLC, an ad agency from Florida that alleges X Corp. is guilty of violating Florida common law because of “unfair competition and trademark and service mark infringement,” as well as the state’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
X Social Media (hereafter referred to as XSM to make this article easier to write) writes in the complaint that it has used its registered trademark, “X SOCIALMEDIA,” continuously since 2016.
XSM claims it has “already suffered loss in revenue that correlates with X Corp.’s rebrand and use of the mark ‘X.’”
It’s unclear how strong X Social Media’s case will ultimately be.
Law professor Alexandra Roberts told The Verge earlier this year that the “crowded field” of “X” trademarks could make it hard for any individual X-branded service to enforce a claim against another — whether that’s Musk’s X or a company like X Social Media.
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Technically they are not exactly on the same field which could allow using similar trademarks. But on the other hand in this case X's use of X could be reasonably argued to be very confusing for customers and therefore violating X's trademark.