One thing the comments here haven't addressed is how Twitter's behaviour in this case compares with how such things have traditionally been dealt with on the In

One thing the comments here haven't addressed is how Twitter's behaviour in this case compares with how such things have traditionally been dealt with on the Internet. I think there's a reasonable expectation that big Web companies act in a way compatible with the rest of the Net even if they are for-profit. Consider the Nissan Computer Corporation website: http://www.nissan.com/ http://www.nissan.com/ Or read about when a company called GAIL tried to take gail.com off a woman named Gail: http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2006/d2006-0655.html http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2006/d2006... Now obviously girl-geeks is not a personal nickname, nor apparently was it previously the name of any sort of registered company or other entity, more of an ad-hoc sort of thing. Given that someone later formed a company with this name and trademarked it, should they get the rights to that Twitter name? Would they be able to take girl-geeks.com off a previous owner who was using it in good faith? My suspicion is that they wouldn't, and Twitter's behaviour is bad netiquette.