Judge Blocks X from Preventing Rival’s Use of ‘Tweet’ Name, Denies Ban on Twitter Branding

A federal court in Delaware has issued a split ruling in a trademark dispute between Elon Musk’s X Corp. and Operation Bluebird, a startup attempting to launch a competing social network. U.S. District Court Judge Colm F. Connolly granted X’s request for a preliminary injunction regarding eight Twitter-related marks, including the core “Twitter” name, but denied the motion concerning the word “tweet” and the platform’s former bird logo.

Operation Bluebird, which recently rebranded its website as Tweet.app, had initially launched under the name Twitter.now. The court barred the use of that specific domain, siding with X on the primary trademark. However, Judge Connolly found that X had likely abandoned the “tweet” and bird logo trademarks, ruling that the startup was likely to succeed in proving the company discontinued bona fide use of those marks with no intention of resuming them.

The Virginia-based startup is led by two attorneys: founder Michael Peroff, based in Illinois, and Stephen Coates, a former trademark lawyer at Twitter. The company’s homepage explicitly states its mission is to reclaim intellectual property that Musk “threw the bird away” on when he renamed the platform X three years ago.

Despite their legal backgrounds raising questions about their commitment to building a new social network rather than acquiring valuable trademarks, Operation Bluebird has opened the platform to early public testing. The company reported that more than 172,000 users requested handles prior to launch, a surge likely driven by public attachment to the original Twitter brand. Users are required to pay a $20 fee to reserve their handle, a move the company suggests helps offset legal costs.

Coates, who serves as president of Operation Bluebird, emphasized the cultural resilience of the term. “They kept the word. They let go of the bird, and they let go of the tweet,” Coates said. “A tweet was never a corporation. It’s one person saying something. That word survived three years of a company trying to replace it, because the public declined to stop using it. We think that tells you who it belongs to.”

The case is not yet final and will proceed to determine whether X ultimately retains rights to any of the abandoned Twitter marks, as the company continues to operate primarily under the X brand.