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“Tweet” and the bird logo apparently enter the public domain
- Rygian 26d agoDecision from the judge "Issuance of the injunction precluding Bluebird's use of the Twitter-formative marks is contingent on X Corp.'s posting of a $500,000 bond." Both X Corp. and Bluebird have asked to go to court on Nov 2027.
- blfr 26d agoThe core reason to enforce trademarks is not to fluff the corporation that holds it but to let the public be confident in the name. So the trademark should hold for as long as a reasonable person can be confused by the new Twitter regardless of people's dislike towards Elon. I may be biased because I still go to Twitter via twitter.com.
- parl_match 26d agoI stopped going. Between the spam and the racist unmoderated AI slop cannon that is discovery there, what's the point
- solarkraft 26d agoI don’t even open twitter/x links anymore because the page is so unusable.
- shevy-java 26d agoSame here. There is always the "log in" nagging pop-up. But I will never log in again to the right-arm-gesture guy, so this is just time wasted for me. We could need some decentralized way to share "tweets" though. Not linked to greedy billionaires.
- flawn 26d agoIf you want to share tweets from X, there is exactly that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49437283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49437283
- 1over137 26d agofb and insta have the same annoying login screens too. seems like most of the web does these days.
- deleted 26d ago[deleted]
- stymaar 26d agoI made the experiment some times ago: it's faster to edit the link, replace x.com with nitter.net and load the content from there, than wait until the original page load. The time difference isn't meaningful (it's less than a second), but the fact that a website loses against a manual redirection to another front end is still a spectacular proof of incompetence.
- TRiG_Ireland 25d agoI found a Firefox plugin which does an automatic redirect to XCancel.
- TFNA 26d agoI wonder if it is by design. On Nitter, which is fast-loading and streamlined, it is trivial to ctrl-click on a bunch of commenter accounts and readily see they are bots (photo from This Person Does Not Exist, unrealistically single-issue posting, etc.). On X where things move slow as treacle, it is harder for the average person to figure that out.
- Cthulhu_ 26d agoI never went (just don't like it), but for a long time it was a primary source for a lot of important things so one kinda gets exposed to it anyway indirectly and / or through embeds. But that's the filtered version, anyway.
- deleted 26d ago[deleted]
- chanux 26d agoRecently found textlog.cc here on HN. At times it felt (the content especially) like the early days of twitter.
- ChrisRR 26d agoI just stopped using twitter and I've not actually felt like I've missed out
- irishcoffee 26d agoI’ve never used any microblogging platform and feel like I’ve never missed out. :)
- Brian_K_White 26d agoDon't know why yer downvoted because this is for real and winning at life.
- KyleTheDev 26d agoMicroblogging has always felt so strange to me, I could never get into it. Why would I want to hear dozens of different short-form opinions from people? Maybe it's the 'tism, but that sounds so anxiety inducing & overwhelming.
- GuinansEyebrows 26d agopolitics and hack takes abound, but there were some legitimately funny people on twitter (some of whom've migrated to other platforms). mostly bad, though.
- mingus88 25d agoTwitter was best when I followed comedians, record labels and venues. (And I should note I left in 2017 when even the funny people couldn’t get a grip on what was happening online) This is what short form posting was meant for. Jokes and quips from witty people and announcements for things I care about. That Twitter became a primary source of news for anyone is a major indicator of the decline of civilization
- darksim905 25d agoWhen your follower/following count is small and you're getting to know people and build a community of people you otherwise wouldn't meet IRL, it can be a great thing. When you start getting inundated with too much information when you have 10K + followers, it can be overwhelming and you lose the signal within the noise and find that it may start affecting other parts of life. I suppose each person is different, but that burned me out and made me uninterested and I burned it all down. I found I was losing sleep checking my phone and getting unusually addicted to stupid things.
- stymaar 26d ago> The core reason to enforce trademarks is not to fluff the corporation that holds it but to let the public be confident in the name. That's something we hear often but it's not grounded in an legal reality: trademarks are purely a form of intellectual property that a person (physical or moral) can hold and it doesn't come with any attached liability: you can't hold a company accountable for violating the trust built around its brand name in past year, and the owner is free to sell the brand name to another company or change their products in a way that mislead the consumer about its quality. In fact, should a trademark come with a promise about the quality of the product, Twitter would have lost it's trademark as soon as Elon transformed it into a disinformation machine (by breaking how the blue tick works and boosting paying account's content).
- dsr_ 26d agois-ought distinction, but specifically: The heksher marks and logos offered by kosher-certification organizations are protected by trademark; using the trademark under license specifically assures the customer that the organization's standards have been followed precisely, and using the trademark without license defeats the purpose. Similarly, the American Halal Foundation, the USDA Organic seal, the UL logo and many other programs use the mechanism of trademark to guarantee that the product or service meets their standards.
- stymaar 26d agoThat's the licensing agreement between the owner and the trademarks, and their customers for the use of the trademark. But the American Halal Foundation could revise their definition of what counts as Halal, and then license the brand to a company that doesn't meet the current criteria, without asking for permission from anyone. It's in your wording already: “the customer that the organization's standards have been followed precisely” (emphasis mine), nothing prevents the organization from changing their standards (well, maybe the licensing agreement with their customer brands does, but that's purely a contract thing and has nothing to to with the trademark per se).
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- geocar 26d ago> The core reason to enforce trademarks is not to fluff the corporation that holds it but to let the public be confident in the name. Nonsense. The core reason to enforce trademarks is to prove that you have it. The yo-yo used to be a trademark too, but the problem was what else do you call it? If the "owner" of a trademark cannot defend it, they don't have it. That's how trademark law is very different than copyright (which is implicit and automatic): You can lose a trademark even if you register it and popularise it, if you can't prove that the trademark represents your actual trade. > [I think] the trademark should hold for as long as a reasonable person can be confused by the new Twitter regardless of people's dislike towards Elon. That's your opinion man. Thankfully the law doesn't work that way. I don't even know whether you mean X (the new thing that was once twitter) or tweet (the new thing that claims to will-be what twitter once was) > I may be biased because I still go to Twitter via twitter.com. and that didn't help in the slightest, but domain squatting is very common on the Internet.
- throwawayffffas 26d agoyeah thats what it boils down to as long as they are using twitter.com. They are also using the twitter trademark.
- cmiles8 26d agoExcept US trademark law doesn’t work like that and hence the case. One of the core things a company needs to do to demonstrate it needs a trademark protected is that it’s actively using said trademark. If X has effectively abandoned Twitter, then it can’t really claim it still needs to protect the name. What you’re describing is more the “Kleenex” effect where words become commonplace. In this case another company builds a platform that has “tweets.” There it’s even more important that the company with the trademark shows that they use the trademark. Here the owner has basically scrubbed the trademark from their existence hence why folks are making these claims.
- MatthewWilkes 26d agoIs it accurate to describe this as the public domain? I would expect that the bird logo still enjoys copyright protection, independent from its status as a trademark.
- camkego 26d agoThe final paragraph says this, among other things: "The court ruled on a preliminary injunction request, so it’s not the final word on the merits. Still, it seems highly likely that the TWEET term and the bird logo have been freed from X’s trademark clutches. If so, it’s nice to get some cultural assets back into the public domain" Seems kind of dubious to say the least.
- dbbk 26d agoNo
- weinzierl 26d agoProbably not many do remember, but before this logo Twitter had a different bird logo until the company was already quite big. If I remember correctly this logo was allegedly bought from a royalty free image platform and Twitter had no exclusive rights to it. Also there was a little outcry that the original artist just received the royalty free platform usual ridiculously small one time payment. EDIT: The one I remember is the second one in the timeline image from the following (unfortunately ad infested) article, so apparently it was not the first one they had. https://www.afaqs.com/news/digital/has-musk-gone-too-far-with-twitter-rebrand https://www.afaqs.com/news/digital/has-musk-gone-too-far-wit...
- nolok 26d ago> Also there was a little outcry that the original artist just received the royalty free platform usual ridiculously small one time payment. I mean, if I tell you I'm to sell something to you for 5 dollars and you will be allowed to do this or that with it, and you give me the 5 dollars and then do this or that, it's a bit ridiculous to then have an "outcry" that you were successfull at doing this or that so you owe me more. Not trying to offend but artists willing to make bird logo for cheap are a dime a dozen, which is why those site exists in the first place, and they didn't care about which one exactly which is why they went on that site to buy it; it's ot like there was any vile or unfair action being done there.
- bsoqk 26d agoNot all outcries have to be entertained.
- thaumasiotes 26d agoAnd similarly, when an outcry is worthless, it's valuable to tell the people involved that they should shut up. Outcries don't have to be entertained and they also don't have to be tolerated.
- Brian_K_White 26d agoOutcries are just collective action. If a majority of people think a thing should happen, then by definition that thing should probably usually happen. If the structure of the moment (societal norms, laws, etc) doesn't provide for it, then the outcry is the initial stage of the conversation and process where we collectively decide whether or not the structure needs to be updated. IE, figure out some new laws or legal principles to apply existing laws such that the thing the majority has decided should happen can happen. Everything you value for yourself and consider normal today, was only the result of some outcry at some point, and at that time there were people going "oh so dramatic the outcry just ignore it"
- shevy-java 26d agoA small, but nonetheless strategically important, defeat for the billionaire Elon "my right arm constantly twitches into a straight arm" musky Musk.
- throw3212 26d ago[flagged]
- whatsupdog 26d agoI remember when people were called racist just for asking more border control. What's the new definition now? My point is that this term has been used so loosely, it has lost its meaning. Racist used to be someone who really despised black/brown people. Now every Trump voter is apparently a racist.
- johneth 26d ago> My point is that this term has been used so loosely, it has lost its meaning. Have you taken a look at X/Twitter lately? There is a lot of out and out racism. Don't give the benefit of the doubt that it's just people who want "border control".
- deleted 26d ago[deleted]
- alt227 26d agoIn the same vein, dont assume that anything negative said about a group of people is racism.
- zzrrt 25d agoThe definition of racist border control includes deporting X00,000 brown people, some of whom had lawful status, and having virtually every one of the 10k refugee admissions be white South African.
- cwillu 26d agoYes, but what does that have to do with the article?
- Animats 26d agoTrademarks are use it or lose it. OLDSMOBILE, for example, is a cancelled General Motors trademark for automobiles.[1] No cars sold, no trademark.
- Tanoc 26d agoActually General Motors still holds the Oldsmobile trademark and renewed it in April of last year. They don't have to sell cars to keep it, as they still sell parts related to the vehicles alongside merchandise that carries the brand's name. You still have to get a license from General Motors to feature the Oldsmobile 442 in your videogame for example.
- Animats 26d agoGeneral Motors LLC ("New GM") still holds five trademarks on OLDSMOBILE, but they're all for merch, not cars. Trademark classes are hub caps, apparel, catalogs, badge holders, and metal banks. The trademark for the automobile class, 74138034, was cancelled in 2016 for failure to file a declaration of use.
- mrweasel 26d agoI can't figure out if renaming Twitter to X is the stupidest branding decision I've ever encountered or if it's bloody brilliant. Every time Danish media talks about X, they say "The social media X". So X in itself is completely unrecognizable, you actively have to mention that you're talking about the social media platform. That's is however also rather genius, because now the connection between X and "social media" is strengthened every time it's mentioned.
- lexicality 26d agoIt's stupid. Every normal (ie not terminally online) person I speak to calls it twitter and is confused if I call it X. For some reason most of them think an "x post" is on instagram too. I guess because influencers call crossposting that?
- rsynnott 26d agoPretty sure lots of people would read x post as cross post, not just influencers. ‘X’ to stand in for cross is a fairly old convention; I think I’ve seen 19th century examples.
- TRiG_Ireland 25d agoX for cross has very old pedigree, dating back at least to Victorian railway stations, such as King's X.
- mrweasel 26d agoIf you do it in person you have to say X with a slight look of disgust in your face, to let them know what you're talking about. Most people I know only knows about X/Twitter from the news cycle, it's not something they themselves use, it's just the platform used by journalists, politicians and commentators. It's not a place normal people go.
- avhception 26d agoIn German media, they always have a little "X (formerly Twitter)" thing. The rebrand is completely ridiculous.
- HelloUsername 26d agoRelated: "Twitter Is Back at Twitter.now" 26.aug.2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49455791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49455791 19 comments "New Twitter rebrands to Tweet.app after court's double-edged ruling" 06.sep.2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49581979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49581979 "Twitter" 10.dec.2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46223543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46223543 11 comments "Former Twitter Attorney Files for 'Twitter' Trademark" 09.dec.2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46208672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46208672 13 comments "US startup seeks to reclaim Twitter trademarks 'abandoned' by Musk's X" 09.dec.2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46203468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46203468
- nunobrito 26d agoIt always made more sense to call these tiny texts as "tweets" rather than "toots" (mastodon) or "status update" (generic) so it would be good having the right to use that term as public domain. There have been worse names for this kind of updates in the past. At some point in time was common to "finger" someone online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_(protocol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_(protocol)
- pmlnr 26d agoMicroblogging. That's the original term.
- 0x69420 26d ago"did you see what the president just microblogged"? come now, surely you understand why it would be beneficial to the commons to have a snappy, catchy term that already has purchase in the public imagination be free to use, right?
- pino83 26d agoOkay, what other catchy term instead of "president" would you suggest?
- thaumasiotes 26d agoKing?
- pferde 26d agoPedophile?
- pino83 26d agoBut people (around me at least) feel bad when they have to compose an entire sentence full of words without any brand names or corporate names inside. They feel like being separated from their mother or like they lost basic orientation when not in each sentence there is "an uber", or "my instagram", or "a youtuber", "a whatsapp", ..., ..., ... The email signature of my former landlord was like that: ..... Phone: 012345 I-Phone: 543210 Funnily, that wasn't some US girlie, but a German grandma. Maybe she got some bad US food on some journey and it made her brain rot away. Yessss, of course, as a bonus, it's a somewhat uncommon way spelling... But, yeah...
- amazingamazing 26d agoI remember when there was a big wave towards bluesky, mastodon and threads. Here we are, every day twitter/x is on the front page.
- ruperthair 26d agoOn the front page for the latest footgun incident? IMO, bluesky is doing great, BTW.
- ryan_glass 26d agoThis reminds me of a certain Southpark episode...
- rglover 26d agoI won't repeat it here but Cartman getting updates from Alec Baldwin is easily one of their all time greatest bits.
- thih9 26d agoLooks like there is now a tweet.new (not the same as twitter.com ) run by Project Bluebird (not the same as Bluesky). Very confusing. The "Trust Dial" seems a new concept to be fair. Then again, it's just a concept and possibly AI generated like the rest of the page. I wonder what trust score would the website assign to itself at that point.
- ck2 26d agoBluesky could do the funniest April Fools
- not-so-darkstar 26d agoWhen did twitter became the place where presidents share news? What did they do before it?
- nemomarx 26d agoSomewhere in Obama's time, and before that they did it on TV press releases (as they still do) or announcements on Whitehouse.gov not really different from how any group shared news before Twitter
- TheRealPomax 26d agoSurely by literally saying "formerly Twitter", this is an admission of non-use, thus invalidating the trademark on the term as it is not just "not used for anything" but is explicitly being distanced from by X in writing.
- lesuorac 26d agoNot really. Think of all of the corporate rebrandings of product lines for a future one to re-use that name. Ex. Google Wallet -> Android Pay -> Google Pay -> Google Wallet [1] A big difference here is that X has been pretty clear on it has no intent to launch a product called Twitter. I doubt you can find similar statements from Google saying they'd never launch a Google Wallet after the Android Pay rebrand. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wallet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wallet
- TheRealPomax 26d agoThose include the name of the company and actively marketed product. If Google rebranded to Winklemoops, and Android get renamed to Callithing, then the "Google" and "Android" trademarks would eventually expire due to trademarks being contingent on actual use. So yeah, "Google Wallet" and "Android Pay" would eventually become perfectly valid names for someone else to claim. And Twitter being renamed to X is literally that: the company and product name were changed, and both the company and product no longer uses that original name for anything other than to call out "formerly Twitter". That is not "use" for the purposes of keeping your trademark.
- deleted 26d ago[deleted]
- pwdisswordfishq 26d agoA lapsed trademark can still be under copyright, right?
- eddof13 25d agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_U5a097HPU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_U5a097HPU - norm
- skiing_crawling 25d agothe "new" Twitter basically looks like a cash/name grab, I was disappointed to see that nobody involved in it was affiliated the Twitter, and it's mostly run by non-technical/lawyer types.
- lylo 25d agoHas anyone actually signed up to tweet.app (twitter.now)? Thoughts?
- eddof13 25d agoNorm Macdonald: I remember the good old days when tweeting meant ...