Musk wins court order to block use of “Twitter,” but not “tweet” and bird logo

Saying X is “formerly Twitter” in App Store lets Musk block use of Twitter name.

On Thursday, Elon Musk’s X won a court order blocking Operation Bluebird from launching a new app taking over the Twitter name.

In his opinion, Chief Judge Colm Connolly explained that Operation Bluebird was unlikely to prove that X had entirely abandoned the Twitter name. Therefore, X was likely to succeed on trademark infringement and dilution claims tied to the platform’s former name.

Most compellingly, X argued that it still uses the Twitter name in the current listing for the X app in Apple’s App Store. In the first sentence of that listing, written in the same size font as the rest of the text, a single clause clinched the early court win for X by stating, “Welcome to X (formerly known as Twitter).”

X’s legal director, Naser Baseer, testified that X “deliberately” added that clause “to ensure that people who were searching for the Twitter app within the App Store, as well as people who were searching for the Twitter app outside of the App Store, would find the Apple app link and have an understanding that this is one and the same app, same platform,” Connolly said.

Additionally, survey evidence showed that people still think Twitter’s a “famous” brand, and X showed that despite wiping the name from its platform, the company still “takes advantage” of the “goodwill” that the “commercially strong” initial brand maintains by associating X with Twitter in the App Store, Connolly wrote.

“By virtue of the parenthetical, the listing is telling customers that what they knew as Twitter is now X and can be accessed by downloading the X app from the Apple App Store,” Connolly said.

It may also strengthen X’s case that twitter.com redirects to x.com, but Connolly did not yet have to weigh that question. Because X could be irreparably harmed if Operation Bluebird benefits from using the Twitter name at X’s expense, Operation Bluebird will be blocked from using the name until litigation is resolved, Connolly ruled.

X can’t block bird logo, “tweet” uses

However, X was not as successful in its claims that it had not abandoned other Twitter marks, including uses of the term “tweet” and the bird logo.

Musk’s public claims that “soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds” and “we’re cutting the Twitter logo off the building with blow torches” provided “compelling evidence that X Corp. harbors an intent not to resume use of the Tweet mark and Bird logo,” the judge found. Therefore, Operation Bluebird is likely to prove that X abandoned those trademarks.

X seemingly tried every tactic under the sun to avoid that outcome. It dug up 12 undated webpages that still featured the bird logo or mentioned the word tweet. All the pages appeared to have been created under prior ownership, and X did not produce evidence showing that they had been updated since Musk took over the platform. Baseer tried to claim that X left those pages up intentionally, but he couldn’t identify any time a deliberate choice was made to leave up a legacy webpage during X’s messy rebranding. Ultimately, the judge decided that X was using old webpages that were inadvertently missed during the rebrand to keep claims to the tweet mark and the bird logo alive.

“The cited web pages are in short remnants of prior use of the Tweet mark and the Bird logo, not evidence that X Corp. is currently engaged in the bona fide use of those marks,” Connolly decided.

The same logic applies to legacy social media accounts X left up on the platform, including the deactivated account, @twitter, which tells people to “follow @x for updates.”

“These inactive accounts, too, are remnants of prior use,” Connolly said, and the old posts from them are also “a relic of the past.”

Perhaps least convincingly, Baseer shared screenshots showing that the legacy Twitter app was still installed on a device belonging to X’s outside counsel. While testifying, Baseer claimed that “more than 200,000 users maintain the legacy app on their phones,” but Connolly said that X showed no evidence substantiating that claim or suggesting that X still maintains the legacy app. When asked when was the last time that X sent a push update to a user’s device with legacy Twitter installed, Baseer responded, “I don’t know what a push update is,” Connolly said.

One of the only other lines of logic that X pursued in trying to get a preliminary injunction to block use of “tweet” and “confusingly similar” bird logos were arguments that X still uses Twitter marks in communications with vendors.

But X again had scarce evidence to back its claims that its “entire vendor onboarding process remains Twitter-branded.” Not impressing the judge, X shared a single email “from an unknown sender to an unknown recipient” that invited a vendor to register to become a Twitter supplier in October 2025. Nowhere in the body of the email does the bird logo appear; however, the email included attachments that still used the bird logo.

This email was not enough to save X from claims that it had abandoned the bird logo. Connolly said that X redacted so much information that it was impossible to tell who the vendor was or if they were based in the US, which was necessary for the claim to survive. Further, Baseer could not identify at a hearing even generally which “types of vendors such emails are sent to,” Connolly said.

“Even if there were credible evidence that someone from X Corp. actually sent the email within the United States in October 2025, nothing in the email or anywhere else in the record suggests that X Corp. was using the email to advertise or sell X Corp.’ s services,” Connolly wrote. “The purpose of the email and attachments was to solicit the services of potential vendors, not to promote or identify X Corp.’ s services. The email is therefore not evidence of X Corp.’s bona fide use of any of the Twitter Marks.”

“For all these reasons, I find it likely that Bluebird will succeed in strictly proving that X Corp. has discontinued bona fide use of the Tweet mark and Bird logo,” Connolly wrote, denying X’s motion to block the uses.

New Twitter quickly rebrands

In a press release provided to Ars, Operation Bluebird President Stephen Coates celebrated the outcome.

“They kept the word,” Coates said. “They let go of the bird, and they let go of the tweet.”

Durk Barnhill, Operation Bluebird’s chief marketing officer, told Ars that “we think this is a huge win” and confirmed that the rival app was immediately renamed following the court’s order.

Operation Bluebird had already launched a domain, twitter.new, but the August 26 launch was not mentioned as part of the court proceedings, so the judge did not directly discuss how his order might impact the rival service.

Despite the judge’s silence, Operation Bluebird has already rebranded, declaring in a press release that “Tweet.App” will be the platform’s new name.

Users unaware of the rebrand may experience issues accessing the new site, though. On early Thursday, Ars noted that twitter.new was redirecting to tweet.app, but, as of this writing, has reverted to a page that previously used the Twitter name to encourage users to sign up for handles. Barnhill confirmed that Operation Bluebird is working through bugs, so the redirect will likely be fixed soon.

Apart from the name of the app, nothing else has changed for the 172,000 users who have already requested handles, the press release said.

For Operation Bluebird, the goal is to launch a service to rival Musk’s that is member-owned, rather than billionaire-owned and controlled. For $20, users can join and get rid of X’s “trust problem,” the tweet.app site said.