X was spooked enough by new Twitter to change its terms of service

Despite the name change and use of decidedly bird-free branding, X tries to maintain its original Twitter brands, TechCrunch reports. The xAI-owned social media platform updated its terms of service to include references to Twitter after only mentioning X, and apparently tried to counter a startup’s petition to cancel the company’s Twitter trademarks with its own petition.

The startup that The first step in this process was to file a petition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to revoke X’s control of Twitter’s trademarks.

“The TWITTER and TWEET marks have been eradicated from X Corp.’s products, services and marketing, thereby abandoning the famous brand, with no intention of resuming use of the mark,” Operation Bluebird explained in the petition. “Petitioner seeks to use and register the trademarks TWITTER and TWEET for new products and services, including a social media platform to be located on the Website. twitter.new“.

In fairness to Operation Bluebird, Elon Musk has been very open about his plans to abandon the Twitter name and bird logo after acquiring the company in 2022. “And soon we will say goodbye to the Twitter brand and, gradually, to all birds,” Musk said in July 2022, shortly before Twitter was renamed : Twitter.com always redirects to X.com.

Updated terms of use TechCrunch spotted now say that as of January 16, 2025, “nothing in the Terms gives you any right to use the X name or the Twitter name or any of the trademarks, logos, domain names, other distinctive brand features and other proprietary rights of X or Twitter, and you may not do so without our express written consent.” The company’s counter-petition also reiterates that the Twitter Marks are the “exclusive property” of X.

Engadget has reached out to Operation Bluebird for a response to X’s petition. We will update this article if we receive a response.

As of this writing, Operation Bluebird has convinced more than 145,200 people to claim access to the company’s new social platform. Perhaps