Microsoft Owns the Trademark for “X”
tsdr.uspto.gov
tsdr.uspto.gov
EDIT: The last one in the list is in regard to this domain:
> Online social networking services; online social networking services, namely, facilitating social introductions or interactions among individuals; social networking services in the fields of entertainment, gaming and application development; providing information about social networking that involves online gaming, online video games and online video gaming applications; providing an Internet website portal for engaging in social networking; providing information, news, commentary in the field of social networking
Make an outrageously high bid on a site with no consistent profit, try desperately to get out of the deal, and fail (as a misdirection of course), alienate power users, kill 50% of revenue, totally nuke site reliability, lose all the top talent, and of course, rack up a pile of lawsuits a mile deep.
And only THEN, blow everybody’s mind by jettisoning a brand so valuable it is a globally recognized verb, rebranding using your competitors IP, and take over 50% of global banking.*
(* this is actually what he said.)
So I’m sure it’s all wine & roses and they’ll be profitable any day.
50 steps ahead. Man is a genius.
But if you're a bit less fussy about the exact metric, Pew Research has some data on the topic:
> "A majority of Americans who have used Twitter in the past year report taking a break from the platform during that time, and a quarter say they are not likely to use it a year from now, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted about five months after billionaire Elon Musk acquired the site." -- https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/05/17/majority-...
> "The majority of highly active Twitter users continue to use the site following Musk’s takeover but are posting less frequently on average." -- https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/05/17/how-us-ad...
- Jack Dorsey, April 25, 2022.
Certainly nobody can deny Elon is solving for the problem of Twitter being a company.
If only we could convert bullshit to energy, we'd need just a handful of these billionaire luminaries to solve the world's energy needs.
https://fortune.com/2023/04/29/elon-musk-twitter-jack-dorsey...
Legal Disclaimer: not actual advice.
I dreamt this morning that I was berating ElMo for being off his meds and making billion-dollar decisions while in manic phase. For months.
I'm actually pretty annoyed that I would even dream about it. I detest the expression, but this is a perfect example of "living rent-free in someone's head". I need to get off the internet.
Life is a lot easier if you just think "I don't care about" this and scroll past. Yet here we are, as I understanding the trademark to X will somehow matter in our personal lives or make us happy
Big brain stuff. Big brain.
It's his money to light on fire and his reputation to tarnish. I don't know why people get so miffed by him. Twitter wasn't anything special to ruin and I think it's doing just fine nowadays.
There's no such thing as bad attention... Not anymore.
I am happier.
But srsly bro you shouldn’t be dreaming about celebrities.
To be clear - I’m just agreeing that we could all benefit from being offline . I shouldn’t even be online at 2am!
Maybe this is a variant of the long-rumored affluenza?
Remember, the entire point of this X exercise is revenge on people who wronged him at PayPal (where he demonstrated total incompetence at managing software projects and people). He's going to show them, dammit. He's going to show all of them!
I suspect you know exactly what was meant by those two statements..
It's gona have crypto and KYC, doesn't it?
Conveniently the advertizers will likely like the additional info.
As will regimes like the saudis.
. . . especially after seeing the last 8 months of baldfaced stupidity
"Elon also understands deep neural nets a lot more than I think people imagine. He starts with good intuitions and mental models, but also actively asks for technical deep dives, and has very good retention. E.g. I recall teaching him about our use of focal loss in contrast to binary cross-entropy for the object detection neural net (I said it had given us a 5% bump and he asked to know more) and he understood how it works about as quickly as you'd expect a PhD student to. The fact that he can do this across many technical disciplines is impressive and borderline superhuman. I don't think people understand or would believe how low-level and technical typical meetings with him are. Just saying because I get triggered reading way off innacurate takes on this topic (original comment)."
Sure there's a Delta Airlines and a Delta Faucets. If I wanted to start Delta Carpentry of Iowa that wouldn't be an issue. However, if I bought Alaska Airlines, woke up tomorrow and rebranded it Delta - you can be sure they'd fly their lawyers out to Anchorage out on a Gulfstream.
[edit] Meta -> Microsoft, from tfa. My bad.
> Providing on-line chat rooms for transmission of messages among computer users concerning video and computer games; providing on-line electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users concerning video and computer games
Under the prosecution history, it shows activity every few years.
Maybe you're right, maybe if this goes to trial or something, it won't meet the burden? I wouldn't want to be on the other end of Satya's legal team though.
> Mark Drawing Type: 1 - TYPESET WORD(S) /LETTER(S) /NUMBER(S)
They do not own the trademark for the letter "X" (that would make a "Standard Character Claim") but the very specific typeset, as featured on the right side of the linked page.
Here [1] it patents a specific illustration format of X. Again no standard character claim.
So no issue for former twitter, as you can easily see the typeset is very different.
I do not know if there is any precedent of a standard character claim for a single letter, but that would really sound ridiculous to me tbh.
[1] https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87980831&caseType=SERIAL_...
The two are equivalent.
> This Type is similar to “STANDARD CHARACTER MARK” in that it can only include words or phrases, and not images, however it does include a claim as to the particular stylization (font) and may, but do not have to, claim color. For example, the trademark “NETFLIX” written in stylized red font.
Edit: The source below is a bit more clear on the differences.
https://www.mavenip.com/blog/standard-character-mark-or-logo...
You can't get trademark on a mathematical symbol, generally.
https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1D54F
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_bold
Such a letter 𝕏 is sometimes used to represent arbitrary or generic metric space:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_space
There is already another Hacker News thread that is dealing with this specific symbol:
[1] https://www.docdroid.net/file/download/Ix0YicK/trademarks-ru...
Microsoft owns a trademark registration for X [standard character] for certain goods and services (see: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=2693757&caseSearchType=US...). Meta owns a trademark registration for X (Stylized), which Microsoft apparently assigned to Meta (see https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87980831&caseType=SERIAL_...). Musk as been using X in various capacities since the 90s, and depending on the specifics of that use, may have some common law trademark rights in the mark.
Regardless of whether or not any party has a registration for a particular trademark/service mark identifying certain goods/services, the question about whether the marks should be allowed to co-exist depends on whether there is a likelihood that there will be confusion between the 2 marks in the marketplace (defining the appropriate marketplace is part of the test for any given likelihood of confusion analysis). There are some other concerns, such as dilution with respect to famous marks that may or may not come into play, but likelihood of [consumer] confusion is the root of it.
Honestly Apple probably has the best shot, as they do use "X" prominently. Mac OS X, iPhone X, etc.
Just because we haven't seen them doesn't mean there is a market (e.g., b2b) where they may be using them. Also, in this particular instance, since these are registered we can look at what they have provided the USPTO as evidence of use in order to renew the registrations. Microsoft (I think the X involved might actually be the X on the globe logo): https://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn76041368&docI.... For Microsoft's use before assigning to Meta: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn87980831&docI.... For that second one, looks like MS sold some assets to Meta after is shut down its Mixer service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixer_(service)
Apple does use X a lot in product names, but (i) the use is never on its own, so the comparison of the marks is, e.g., X vs Mac OS X, and (ii) Apple generally uses X to denote "10" so that portion of the mark is arguably descriptive or generic as a version number (see https://tmep.uspto.gov/RDMS/TMEP/print?version=current&href=...).
ms sold this one to meta
> Design and development of computer software; providing interactive websites featuring technology that enable online users to create personal profiles; providing online non-downloadable software and software as a service (SaaS) services featuring software, for transmitting and for receiving live streaming; providing online non-downloadable software and software as a service (SaaS) services featuring software, for transmitting and for receiving video on demand; electronic storage of electronic media, namely, images, text, video, and audio data; providing temporary use of online non-downloadable software and software as a service (SaaS) services featuring software for broadcasting, transmitting, receiving, accessing, viewing, uploading, downloading, sharing, integrating, encoding, decoding, displaying, formatting, organizing, storing, caching, transferring and streaming of data, text, games, game content, digital media, images, music, audio, video and animations; providing temporary use of online non-downloadable software and software as a service (SaaS) services featuring software for sending, receiving and organizing electronic mail, messaging, enabling internet chat and social networking; providing temporary use of online non-downloadable software and software as a service (SaaS) services featuring software for purchasing and subscribing to digital media content; providing temporary use of online non-downloadable software and software as a service (SaaS) services featuring software for developing and publishing applications for interactive streaming; providing temporary use of online non-downloadable software and software as a service (SaaS) services featuring software for management and storage of digital media; computer software consulting services in the field of gaming technology and graphics software; computer programming services; providing temporary use of non-downloadable game software; Application service provider (ASP), namely, hosting computer software applications of others; hosting of third party digital content in the nature of photos, videos, audio, music, text, data, images, software, applications, games, web sites and other electronic works on the Internet; hosting of digital content on the Internet; consulting in the field of the design and development of computer hardware, software, software applications, and computer networks; digital and electronic file data transfer from one computer format to another; provision of Internet and computer network search engines; graphic design services; Software as a Service (SAAS) featuring software for facilitating audio, video and digital content creation, subscriptions and one-time purchases; creating an online community for computer users to participate in discussions, obtain feedback, form virtual communities, and engage in social networking; software maintenance, installation and update services; providing a website featuring technology that enables users to live stream gaming content, music, audio, video and animations
> Online social networking services; online social networking services, namely, facilitating social introductions or interactions among individuals; social networking services in the fields of entertainment, gaming and application development; providing information about social networking that involves online gaming, online video games and online video gaming applications; providing an Internet website portal for engaging in social networking; providing information, news, commentary in the field of social networking
The Internet seems huge to programmers, but it’s still a fairly narrow slice of economic activity. We aren’t talking about nursery schools, hospitals, fast food, or even the XGames etc just because they happen to have a website.
A similar sort of trademark fight:
> In 1978, Apple Corps, the Beatles-founded holding company and owner of their record label, Apple Records, filed a lawsuit against Apple Computer for trademark infringement. The suit was settled in 1981 with an undisclosed amount being paid to Apple Corps. [...] As a condition of the settlement, Apple Computer agreed not to enter the music business, and Apple Corps agreed not to enter the computer business.
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
However like most discourse nowadays, I can't trust a single take on any of this. It's all predictably far more political than fact-based in a sort of self-fulfilling, postmodern, prophesy.
Digg was utterly destroyed by this. Then Reddit, which has not died, but is utterly captured and zombified. HackerNews is the last bastion of this - and it is certainly the best, but is clearly being Digg/Reddit'fied.
Whatever this ideological capture cancer zombification is - it's cancer. If you are reading this, recognize it is probably happening to you too. Seems inevitable.
The "you have now been banned by r/pyongyang" punchline is now far more relevant to any subreddit, thread or comment that is not sufficiently left wing (as defined by current date/time).
Reddit is "democratic" insofar as the most upvoted thread/comment makes it to the top, right? No. Around 2016, something happened. (Won't speculate here). Now every default subreddit is run/moderated by explicitly far left wing activists. All non-default subreddits with any level of popularity is similarly run/moderated by explicitly far left wing activists. If it ain't far left Tumblr leftist, it's right wing, and it shall be either annexed by a left wing mod and converted or outright banned.
I'd love to hear HN's strategy to combat this. It is truly nuts. But at this point, we all expect it.
There is 0 difference in absurdity between banning posts of "Kim Jong Un does surely poop and pee" in r/pyongyang and "Men cannot get pregnant" in r/science.
They're cult members stuck. Unfortunately it's not easy to get unstuck from there.
You've been radicalized. Please get help.
>Providing on-line chat rooms for transmission of messages among computer users concerning video and computer games; providing on-line electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users concerning video and computer games
> Entertainment services, namely, providing interactive multiplayer game services for games played over computer networks and global communications networks; providing computer games and video games downloadable over computer global communications networks; providing information on the video game and computer game industries via the Internet; and providing information on computer games, video games, video game consoles and accessories therefor via the Internet
https://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn76041368&docI...
... shows a u/c Latin X with serifs. However the current "status" shows the Mark as: X ie sans-serif.
Is there a difference with respect to a trademark, in the US, between X avec au sans serif? You obviously can't trademark something drawn from the commons - so the letter X itself is probably out of bounds unless you use it in an innovative way.
To become a trademark, you need to innovate in some way ... be distinctive. X ie two short lines crossing at their mid point at an angle between 30 and 45 degrees (can easily be made more formal) defines ... x.
The original filing seems to define X with embellishments (serifs). The current Status implies X without embellishments. Also, the original depiction is pixelated and the L to R stroke is thicker than the R to L stroke.
Its all a bit woolly
Doesn't this just mean they own the rights to their use as a logo? Eg the stylized X on their products? I don't think this blocks anybody from using X in their products as long as the logos are clearly different.
This is impressive. No more poop emoji?
The Norwegian Blue... 44 billion volts...
This is an X-Parrot!!