Did Twitter steal its new name and logo?
Twitter’s new name and logo is less than a week old. But the company is already in trouble. Because apparently several other companies hold the naming rights to the letter X – including Meta and Microsoft.
On Monday, July 24, 2023, Elon Musk announced that his recently acquired company, Twitter, would be called X. A new logo has also adorned the platform since then and the domain “X.com” redirects to “Twitter.com”.
But that should not be the end of the matter for Elon Musk. Because it looks like several companies hold the rights to Musk’s favorite letters – including Meta and Microsoft. The rebranding could again prove to be an expensive affair for the Twitter owners.
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Twitter and the crux with the X
“There’s a 100% chance someone will sue Twitter over this,” quoted Reuters trademark attorney Josh Gerben. He found “nearly 900 active US trademark registrations” associated with the letter X.
These include the tech giants Meta and Microsoft. Microsoft, which sells the Xbox console, registered a trademark X back in 2003. This refers to communications via the in-house video game system.
Meta has owned trademark rights related to the letter X since 2019. The group owns the registered US federal trademark for a blue and white X for software and social media.
Where did Twitter’s new logo come from?
While things are probably heating up in the legal department of X, the platform itself is also discussing where Twitter’s new logo came from, among other things.
Some users see the X, now widely used by Elon Musk, as the letter from Monotype’s “Special Alphabets 4” font.
Elon Musk’s new logo for Twitter’s re-branding as “X App” is simply the capital X glyph from the font “Special Alphabets 4” from Monotype’s Special Alphabets font family. pic.twitter.com/khKWBZNmBU
— Fontendo (@Fontendou) July 24, 2023
But Phil Garnhan, Executive Creative Director at Monotype, has disproved this theory, as the Financial Times reported. The letter used by Twitter looks similar to the font. However, it is not the X from the “Special Alphabets 4” font.
Twitter: The X from Unicode
But the X used by Elon Musk and Twitter for the new logo comes from Unicode. A standard that defines how characters are represented in electronic form.
The Unicode contains about 150,000 characters, including the X for renaming Twitter. The code behind it is U+1D54F and stands for the Mathematical Double-Struck Capital X.
According to the report of Financial Times it is questionable whether such a Unicode letter can be used for a trademark at all.
The question also arises as to who created this sign. According to the FT Apple that “could still decide to riot.”
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