Musk's X sues start-up over old Twitter name and logo

Elon Musk's X Corp sued a start-up on Tuesday over its attempt to claim the retired Twitter name and its iconic blue bird logo.

Operation Bluebird argued in a filing with the US Patent and Trademark Office that Musk's social media platform X had abandoned the brand and the trademark should be cancelled.

X responded with a lawsuit, saying the start-up was "brazenly attempting to steal the world-famous TWITTER brand."

Musk bought Twitter for about $44 billion around three years ago and later rebranded it as X, removing references to Twitter across the platform. Operation Bluebird sees this as evidence that X does not intend to use the old name and logo and plans to use them for a new site, Twitter.new.

X countered that redesigning the website and app does not constitute abandoning the Twitter trademark. The company noted users still refer to posts as "tweets" and continue using the Twitter name. Meanwhile, users can claim profile names on Twitter.new, with more than 145,000 names already requested, according to the website.