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Will X navigate a slew of trademark lawsuits?

An endless slew of infringement lawsuits have come Elon Musk’s way since the Twitter to X rebrand. Will the whole thing be short lived, or can the billionaire prevail?

Elon Musk’s strange affinity with the letter X isn’t sufficient enough to negate existing licensing laws apparently. Who would’ve thought?

Back in July, when the obsessive billionaire began to implement Twitter’s rebrand to ‘X’, we delved into the underlying motivations behind what seemed a snap-judgment move and explored the potential implications.

The fact that billions had been lent to Musk from banks and private investors to acquire Twitter in the first place suggested erasing the bluebird from existence wouldn’t be straightforward. The primary adversary, however, would always be acquiring rights to the coveted X trademark.

As trademark attorney Josh Gerben told Reuters back then, there’s ‘about a 100 percent probability that Twitter/X will be sued by both opportunistic and legitimate plaintiffs over the new name.’

Mere months later, Musk is now in the crosshairs of several companies either feeling their image is being ripped off or their marketing is becoming confused. On the latter, a Florida based law firm (X SocialMedia) has recently decided to sue Musk for lost revenue due to X dominating SEO.

‘As X is a social media platform, consumers naturally conflate “X SocialMedia” as an X Corp.’s social media platform,’ the plaintiff recently explained in court.

X SocialMedia’s injunction is requesting damages equivalent to three times its losses, alleging that Musk ignored a cease and desist order back in August.

Evidently in a sticky situation, there’s plenty more where that came from. There are reportedly some 900 US trademark registrations on ‘X’ across several industries, including Microsoft’s flagship console the Xbox Series X, which has held the trademark since 2003.

Quite frankly, it appears the harder Musk pushes to expand X’s horizons, the more pushback he will receive. That doesn’t bode well considering the 52-year-old’s master plan was always to form an ‘everything app’ called X.com.

Primed to include several huge facets permeating audio, video, messaging, banking, and ecommerce, Musk’s Western answer to WeChat seems destined to create new adversaries from all industries – if he proceeds as planned.

A legal minefield looms, but if there’s someone pig-headed enough to charge on ahead without looking back, Musk is your man.

Only last month, Musk was forced to remove blinding X signage from the app’s HQ building in San Fransisco, without attaining permission to install it in the first place, by the way.

Could this latest lawsuit be a major inclination that the lights are going out on the Twitter rebrand already?

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