Elon May Have a Huge Issue Because Microsoft Owns the “X” Trademark

“So Musk has destroyed a beloved and robust model, for potential years of litigation, and probably no model.”

X Spouse

Elon Musk’s Twitter rebrand simply acquired far more sophisticated.

To recap: over the weekend, the billionaire Twitter proprietor — who, notably, has needed to personal a web site known as X.com for a really, really, really long time — introduced that, after paying $44 billion for the social media app, firing virtually everybody who labored there, and rolling out a collection of site infrastructure-destroying product adjustments whereas subjecting workers to stinky, janitor-less office buildings, Twitter was to be rebranded as merely “X.” Whereas Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino claims that X will likely be an AI-powered everything app, the location presently appears to be like roughly the identical, with a easy brand change and a very confused DNS trying like the one main adjustments.

And now, so as to add one other layer of confusion to the seemingly shortsighted transfer, it seems that fellow Silicon Valley behemoth Microsoft really owns the trademark to the letter — which means that Musk might nicely face a severe authorized wrestle within the months or years forward.

“Microsoft owns a trademark for X,” tweeted Andres Guadamuz, a college member in mental property regulation on the Unversity of Sussex. “So Musk has destroyed a beloved and robust model, for potential years of litigation, and probably no model.”

Billionaire Battles

It is also price noting that Microsoft and Musk haven’t got a very pleasant historical past. In any case, the corporate was based by fellow billionaire and rival Bill Gates, with whom Musk maintains a meme-driven feud. Microsoft has additionally invested mind-boggling quantities of cash into OpenAI, the Sam Altman-helmed AI firm that Musk helped found again in 2015, solely to exit the agency in 2018 on what are rumored to have been not-so-amicable phrases.

Oh, and Musk additionally not too long ago threatened to sue Microsoft, arguing that OpenAI’s AI coaching practices utilized unlawfully-acquired Twitter knowledge.

It does appear to be true that Musk owns “X.com,” claiming a number of years again that he had bought the area from PayPal for nostalgia’s sake.

“Thanks PayPal for permitting me to purchase again x.com!” Musk tweeted on the time. “No plans proper now, nevertheless it has nice sentimental worth to me.”

And truthfully, Musk’s apparent affection for the title in mind, we would not be in any respect terribly shocked to know that the billionaire is conscious of Microsoft’s patent and greater than prepared to take the title to courtroom. Apart from, if he is made something clear previously few weeks, it is that he loves to challenge his deep-pocketed rivals. Who is aware of, perhaps he’ll simply ask Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to satisfy him on the Vegas Octagon to settle any future dispute.