ALPHABET ABUSE
X, the Social Media Site Formerly Known as Twitter
How many times have you heard this?
One has to wonder how an organization can trademark a letter. Each letter in any language has been used for far too many years far too many times in too many ways to be unique. In this case, well-known prior art comes from ancient pirate maps where “X marks the spot.”
It would seem that one should just forget about IP for the content of a “letter-name.”
However in the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) database of active trademark applications, one finds the letter “x” trademarked multiple times for multiple types of goods and services. A number of them are owned by X CORP. CORPORATION NEVADA 1355 MARKET STREET, SUITE 900 SAN FRANCISCO CALIFORNIA 94103. This address was formerly used by the corporation known as Twitter. So it appears the social media site formerly known as Twitter has applied to trademark the letter “X.”
One can’t help but ask, “Y”?
The graphic treatment of a letter can be trademarked. Multiple stylized treatments of “X” appear when searching. These other applications predate the application of those folks from 94103 and visually distinguish themselves from all the others.
In applications from the San Fran corporation on the USPTO site, the letter looks like it is in Times New Roman font. How inventive. The aforementioned corporation uses a logo with a hollow backslash, but it does not appear in most (all?) of these applications.
Further issues:
- When one uses X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, what do you call the things you create? “X-es”? “Yeah, I Xed my ex and she told me to go to hell.”
- Hasn’t the pornography industry beat this letter to death? And do you really want to be inexorably linked to X-rated content?
Let’s make this easier on all of us. A simple substitution should do the trick. Folks ex-Twitter, get off the shitter and change to “Xitter.” That one-of-a-kind moniker will absolve us from further confusion.
“Xitter” search results:
“No TESS (Trademark Electronic Search System) records were found to match the criteria of your query.” Hooray!
And the “posts” we create on Xitter can be known as “Xits.”
“Yeah, I popped a Xit to my ex and she told me to go to hell.”
