Court finds X abandoned tweet and bird logo trademarks while keeping Twitter

Court finds tweet and the bird logo likely abandoned

A federal court in Delaware has dealt X Corp. an unusual trademark loss: a ruling that the company most likely abandoned its rights to the word "tweet" and the Twitter bird logo, while simultaneously letting it keep the Twitter name itself. The account comes from Eric Goldman, writing on the Technology & Marketing Law Blog, covering a decision issued September 3, 2026 in X Corp. v. Project Bluebird Inc.

The opponent is Project Bluebird, a social media service built to recreate the platform as it existed before Elon Musk rebranded Twitter as X. According to Goldman, the company had been operating at the domain twitter.new and renamed itself tweet.app immediately after the ruling came down. It had also filed intent-to-use trademark applications for both "Twitter" and "tweet" in 2025, on the theory that X's rebranding had abandoned all three marks: Twitter, tweet and the bird logo.

Why the Twitter name survived

Under US trademark law, a mark is abandoned when its owner stops using it in commerce and shows no intent to resume. The court found X still uses the Twitter name, pointing to its Apple App Store listing, which describes the product as X formerly known as Twitter and invites users to download it. Relying on precedents that treat "formerly known as" references as ongoing trademark use, the judge reasoned that the parenthetical tells customers the service they remember as Twitter is now X.

Goldman pushes back on that reasoning. In his view, the listing works like a corporate history page recounting a company's past names: if merely mentioning legacy brands were enough to preserve them, the abandonment doctrine would effectively cease to exist. He argues the court could plausibly have reached the opposite conclusion, especially given how publicly Musk has repudiated the brand, though he concedes the listing does let consumers find X through whatever residual goodwill toward Twitter remains.

The tweet mark and the bird fared worse

For the other two marks, the evidence pointed in one direction. The court noted that neither the tweet wordmark nor the bird logo appears in the App Store listing, and that X eventually conceded at an April hearing that neither appears anywhere on x.com's home page. Some of X's supporting evidence was also defective: exhibits referenced only the Twitter mark, lacked dates, or reflected usage from before the rebrand. In the court's words, certain account postings are "a relic of the past."

Summing up, the court found Musk's public statements and the rebranding itself amount to "compelling evidence" that X has no intention of resuming use of the tweet mark and the bird logo.

Not the final word, but probably decisive

Because the decision addressed a request for a preliminary injunction, it is not a final judgment on the merits. Goldman nevertheless considers it highly likely that tweet and the bird logo are now effectively free of X's trademark claims, returning two cultural assets to the public domain, at least until Project Bluebird or another party attempts to register them again. As for the Twitter name, Goldman is skeptical that X is genuinely maintaining that mark either, and predicts it will eventually be deemed abandoned too.

Why it matters

The decision unwinds X's ownership of two of the most recognizable brand assets in social media history. If the finding holds, anyone — app makers, meme accounts, rival platforms — could use "tweet" and the bird logo without a license, a rare case of internet-era vocabulary reverting to the commons. The ruling also sends two signals to brand owners: a "formerly known as" credit can keep a retired name legally alive, but a loud, deliberate rebrand can be read as intent to abandon everything else in the portfolio. For Project Bluebird and similar ventures, it clears a path to trade on Twitter's lingering identity, and it virtually guarantees more litigation before the story is over.