X Corp. has secured a preliminary injunction stopping startup Operation Bluebird from using the Twitter name for a competing social network. The same Delaware federal court ruling, however, found that X is unlikely to retain exclusive rights to the term “Tweet” or Twitter’s former blue bird logo.
Judge Colm Connolly concluded that X is likely to show consumer confusion and trademark infringement if a rival service uses Twitter. The injunction applies while the wider trademark dispute proceeds.
The court pointed to X’s continuing commercial association with the retired brand. Its App Store listing still describes the service as “X, formerly known as Twitter,” while twitter.com has continued redirecting users to X. Those details indicated that Twitter remains in use as an identifier for the platform despite the 2023 rebrand.
The assessment was different for Tweet and the blue bird. According to Reuters, the court found at this stage that X had likely abandoned those marks, with public statements made during Elon Musk’s rebranding campaign contributing to that view. Musk had described moving on from “all the birds” and removing Twitter logos.
X argued that legacy accounts and pages still online showed it had not abandoned the marks. The judge was not persuaded, viewing them more as remnants of previous use than evidence of ongoing commercial use.
Operation Bluebird has complied with the order concerning Twitter and shifted its project to Tweet.app. The startup says more than 172,000 people have paid $20 each to reserve usernames. The ruling is preliminary, leaving the eventual status of the Tweet name and blue bird logo to be decided as the case continues.
