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Comment by snowwrestler | Hacker News Reader

One interesting aspect is that trademarks have to be in use in order to be defended.

If Musk’s X moves away from the name “Twitter” and the bird logo as completely as they seem likely to, those will become essentially undefended trademarks that someone else could start using.

Want to found Twitter all over again?

There are ways (legal tricks) to rebrand while defending the old brand. But these require detailed legal advice, disciplined ops, and a will to do so. I’d say that it looks like Musk is lacking all three of those at X right now.

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It would be hilarious, if 100% unlikely, if jack@ reclaimed the Twitter brand and renamed Bluesky into Twitter.

Doesn't Musk like to say the funniest outcome is the most likely? People were happy on twitter when Jack ran it, he might as well take the reins back

it's really not as hard as you think it is. Companies are not limited to owning just one product with one branding. If removing a product from the shelves was all it took for others to be allowed to immediately steal all the branding you had on it, the tech world would be a lot more chaotic.

If not using it is a big deal (it's not, but let's assume it is), it doesn't require "detailed legal advice, disciplined ops" to put add logo on a webpage.

> it doesn't require "detailed legal advice, disciplined ops" to put add logo on a webpage.

It actually does, because the use has to satisfy the specific terms of the trademark, which might not be accomplished by just a logo on a random web page. And it has to stay there even in the face of internal pressure to “turn the page” on the old brand, or the general drift of focus/priorities over time.

This is one those things that is simple in concept, but can be deeply complicated by internal factors. I’ve got years of experience doing this.

Trademarks are like a ratchet; if you let them slip too far, it can be extremely difficult to turn them back. And things tend to slip if left unattended.

Edit to add: note that I also said “a will to do so.” It’s not even clear whether Musk will want to defend the Twitter trademark. Certainly doesn’t look like it so far.

This reminds me of Twix, which every few years or so brings out a "special" Raiders edition to defend the old brand.

Perhaps Musk will do something similar. He's definitely not going to give up Twitter, and even if he does, he'll keep the domain.

And it's not just a trademark matter. I haven't looked in detail at how the Twitter acquisition was structured, but somewhere there's a spreadsheet with the words "goodwill" and next to those words there's a huge number reflecting what Musk overpaid for Twitter.

To simply stop using the Twitter brand, logo, and verb-ology would be a huge slap to that number, not that it really means anything financially.

See: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/goodwill.asp

There are already reports that some investors have marked down their Twitter stakes by 2/3 or more.

> he'll keep the domain

Unless the company forgets to renew the domain because everyone who would be responsible for that has quite or been fired. Not that I think this is at all likely, but God would it be hilarious.

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