X Sues X Over Use of the Name X
When your company's name is one letter, it's inevitable that someone's going to fight you over it. Elon Musk's X is facing a lawsuit from the similarly named X Social Media LLC.
X Social Media connects law firms and their clients through, you guessed it, social media. The Florida-based X Social Media is now seeking a permanent injunction on the use of the name X, Reuters reports.
In the blue corner, we have Elon Musk's X, formerly Twitter. The eclectic CEO changed Twitter's name to X in July 2023 as part of his attempt to make an app for everything. Musk removed just about every mention of Twitter from the site, from the URL to the app icon. He even stole the @X username from a long-time user (though @TwitterMovies became just @Movies, as @XMovies has a slightly more lascivious connotation).
In the red corner, we have X Social Media. Founded in 2015, the company owns the federally registered trademark X SOCIALMEDIA and says it has invested $2 million in brand awareness along with $400 million in advertising. In its lawsuit, X Social Media cites customer confusion and loss of revenue as the reasons for going after Musk's X.
Originally, X Social Media sent a cease and desist letter in August letting the network formerly known as Twitter know that it was infringing on the X name trademark. Musk's X ignored the letter and continued to submit multiple trademark registrations with the US Patent and Trademark Office. According to the lawsuit, this is going to essentially bury X Social Media.
As we noted in July, Meta received a trademark for its own X logo to be used across a variety of internet-related services, including social networking and digital messaging, in 2019. A myriad of other companies also hold the rights to X
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