If it's so widely used, isn't that just evidence that it's just not trademarkable? Musk just needs to be able to use it, not to prevent others from using it.
I'm not a trademark expert. Just putting the ideas out there for discussion.
We can talk about trademark law, but — aside from law — what about the ludicrous overuse of X in naming commercial items? I think it's liked because it's close to saying "sex." Better than sex, really, because "s" is the most troublesome letter to say.
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If it's so widely used, isn't that just evidence that it's just not trademarkable?
Yes common terms are not trademarkable, generally. "Hundreds of uses" would indicate a common term. Without a second of research my mind immediately went to "X Prize" and "X Games," two widely reported entities.
Something that can't be said in polite company; racy or mysterious. X-rated. Madame X. For that matter, X-ray. Isn't there a Planet X movie?
How can any company in any industry have intellectual property rights to a letter, may I ask? We all use these things quadrillions of times a day… maybe more…
“If it's so widely used, isn't that just evidence that it's just not trademarkable”
Kudos for recognizing “negative rights”—something that most Americans don’t get.
"If it's so widely used, isn't that just evidence that it's just not trademarkable? "
You would think.
Isn't there a Planet X movie?
There might be a planet X in our solar system, with an excentric orbit that takes several thousand years. Gravitational forces indicate that possibility.
Musk could simply be cozying up to Xi...again.
XXX was taken. Or so I'm told.
Xerox starting using a stylized X as their logo in 1994. (Here then scroll down a bit.)
And here's a whole page of X logotypes for various companies: logosandtypes.com/alphabet/letter-x/
I don’t like it. I don’t like the letter. After some thought it finally hit me.
Something about filling the box with an X. I identify the letter with bureaucracy.
I hate forms. Always have.
Fist question: does he even care if it is his trademark?
The underlying reason to have laws that recognize and protect trademarks is market efficiency. Trademarks can convey a lot of information in short "code words", to and for the consumer.
The protection of trademarks means to keep others from pawning off their inferior products freeriding on your expenditures to build a market understanding of the information conveyed by your trademark.
So, question to the smarter people here: what scenarios can you come up with, whereby someone would freeride and pawn off an inferior product to their advantage and Elon's loss?
Any attempts would (it seems to me) only grow Elon's X brand.
"If it's so widely used, isn't that just evidence that it's just not trademarkable?"
Shhhh!
Little brain lefties like Dumb Lefty Mark and LLR-democratical and Violent Homosexual Rage Rape Fantasist Chuck along with gadfly need something, anything, for their next set of moronic complaints about Musk.
X Box
Trademark refers to a specific area of use. That's how Apple got away with Apple despite the Beatles' record company Apple.
X is how everyone who can't write signs their name.
X is the Kleenex, Xerox, Band aid of the alphabet. Trademark erosion or Genericization of X such as aspirin, heroin, Velcro, and Lipitor. Perhaps Musk would have done better with X Messaging or messageX.
And who can forget the great LA punk band X.
Burning House of Love. Put the headphones on and crank it up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdnC0XPbEnE
Tesla has a model X vehicle. Add that to the model S, model 3 (backwards E), and model Y and it spells SEXY.
There have been a few notable lawsuits over X in media, my favorite: ESPN settles trademark suit by Quiksilver over X Games logo
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-25-fi-quiksilver25-story.html
on a related topic, the Tesla Model 3 was supposed to be the Model E. Elon wanted his lineup to be S / E / X / Y. He ended up with S3XY because of trademark issues: https://www.motorbiscuit.com/why-tesla-model-3-called-3-hint-sexy/.
Trademark law is a money pit. The key standard, likelihood of confusion, is a multifactorial jumble of expensive to prove elements. Case law generates contradictory precepts. The lawyers who specialize in the area see each case as a pile of cash waiting to be picked up. Discovery goes on and on, motion practice will take a year. Then, SJ, trial, or settlement. It's a morass.
Individual letters are not automatically non-trademarkable in the United States - think "N" for New Balance shoes, for example. Virtually all single-letter marks are "design" marks - they include some kind of stylized presentation of the letter. For example, the stylized "C" of the Chicago Cubs, New Balance's series of "N" marks, and the like. Where there are many such stylized marks based on a single letter, the degree of difference needed for a second one to not infringe is reduced, under the theory that the public understands to appreciate subtle differences, having experienced such with respect to that letter. So here, assuming Musk is looking to use a stylized mark, the large number of "X" marks may actually be of benefit to Musk's X/Twitter.
BRAND X is always the name of the other tested product. And like the Washington Generals, BRAND X never wins. Somebody explain that to Elon.
New Coke didn't last long either.
There's a story in Axios about a September bio by Walter Isaacson about Musk. Musk has been thinking about this "X" thing for years. Says it will be a trillion dollar company.
X is a name that's not subject to copyright or trademark.
I don't use Twitter and the two or three times I made an effort, I was completely baffled by its utility or appeal. However, given the many users of Twitter, what possible reason would Musk have to change it from the globally-recognized name "Twitter" to the completely inapt and tone-deaf "X?" Is he purposely trying to destroy the properties he has purchased?
Musk already has "Space-X". Space X the launch company is a service provider to Musk's satellite communications company, StarLink. (surprisingly, not "StarlinX ?)
I've argued that Starlink customers ought to get a free Twitter (now, "X") verification mark. A blue mark. Maybe a blue star. Or a blue "X". After all, the MAC (hardware) address of the Starlink groundside equipment and the IP (internet routing) address of the user access are both verified to Musk's other companies. Hasn't the point of the blue bird, blue check, whatever been to ensure that, for instance, nobody mistakes Sean Spicer the commentator from Sean Spicier, the parody?
It isn't trademarkable.
Model S.
Model 3.
Model X.
Hmm.
"Trademark refers to a specific area of use."
Yeah, that's my understanding. If there is already an XYZ Toasted Filbert company, you can't trademark XYZ Toasted Filberts. But you can do pecans. But if Musk is fixing to have X get into a lot of different businesses, that could be a problem.
I don't think Musk approaches this as a business matter. He has long wanted to build a company called X that would kick everybody's ass at everything. I think he basically is saying, "What's the point of being the richest man on Earth about 60% of the time, if I can't call my company whatever I fucking want? Order another boatload of attorneys, and a whole bunch of gigantic "X" signs. Make 'em dayglo orange. No, the attorneys."
Musk has owned the X.com URL and website since the 1990s.
It’s also where treasure is found.
X marks the spot.
- Rafe
The design of the X might be trademarkable, but the X itself is not. That much should be obvious—if individual letters were trademarkable, we could only have 26 companies in our entire economy.
I thought Sesame Street owned the letter X.
It is weird since the brand Twitter was the most valuable think the Twitter corporation owns.
The trademark isn't that important.
What is important is the domain name x.com
Someone registered that in 1993 and reregistered it in 2017 according to whois. Whois does not say who owns it.
My understanding is that Musk owns x.com but I don't know that for a fact
I assume it to be true since x.com takes me to Twitter.com, now with the x logo at the top of the page
John Henry
No, it’s not complicated. The writer is an idiot.
This is right up there with.......”We’ve got Trump now!!”.
A quick search, usi g phone so not thorough, turs up 34,000 instances of x as a word trademark or part of a word trademark eg; x-bow. I can only get the first 50 to disp on my phone. There are 5 trademarks for "X" in the list
Companies use it for:
Hats and hoodies
Software 2 companies both unrelated to anything msofy or Twitter does
Refrigerator magnets etc
Search was at uspto.gov
John Henry
"Brand X" used to be a staple of advertising
"housewives preferred pfoberdoam detergent 3to 1 over Brand X"
John Henry
@Althouse
Apple Computers didn't "get away with" anything when it registered and used the same word as Apple records.
The test is whether a mark is "confusingly similar" to another registered trademark. No one would confuse Apple Records and their products with Apple Computers and theirs.
(btw I wonder why feminists haven't been bitching for years about the bite in that Apple logo. Isn't that a diss against females? After all, wasn't it Eve, at Satan's urging, who took a chomp out of the apple from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, thereby getting humans banished and forced forever to lead lives of struggle and suffering?)
p.s. how do people who can't write, in languages not using the Roman alphabet, sign their names? Anyone know?
Must should rename the company "Two X's" , and refer to himself as "The Most Interesting Man in the World."
That'd really piss'em off.
Poor Elon. If Twitter fails so completely he can't even sell it for parts he will still be the richest man in the universe.
His only claims to fame will be
Starting the only successful (so far) us car company in 90 years
Starting the first commercially successful space cpmpany
Developing the first reusable rocket.
Starlink looks like it will be successful.
Yeah fuck all these folks rooting for Twitter to fail. They just want to piss on his grave while high-fiving each other saying "yeah, what a loser Elon Musk turned out to be. Not at all like us Kool Kidz"
John Henry
Robert Cook: "I don't use Twitter and the two or three times I made an effort, I was completely baffled by its utility or appeal."
Also Robert Cook: "However, given the many users of Twitter, what possible reason would Musk have to change it from the globally-recognized name "Twitter" to the completely inapt and tone-deaf "X?" Is he purposely trying to destroy the properties he has purchased?"
LOL
What an absolutely perfect marxist "assessment" of a perfectly capitalistic manuever by the most successful, visionary and forward thinking businessman currently alive.
Cookie, are you pals with Dumb Lefty Mark, gadfly and LLR-democratical and Violent Homosexual Rage Rape Fantasist Chuck? Because you guys very clearly share very similar business acumen "capabilities".
Based on Musk's history and some of his comments about the "X" logo before he started using it, I'd bet the logo is temporary, even if he officially changes the name of the company to "X".
He has a pattern of testing ideas in public, often in what appears to be a slapdash way, and then either iterating or abandoning them quickly, depending on how they perform.
Consistent with that is that the particular "X" he chose is a basic, unformatted, unmodified Unicode character "��", also known as the "Mathematical Double-Struck Capital X". (Unicode is an international standard for digitally representing characters ranging from alphabetical letters to common symbols to emoji.)
Musk has the rights to X.com, which was originally used for what became paypal. I thought he wanted to leverage this domain name for what was formerly known as twitter. He may not care about whether he can trademark the new name because the barrier to entry for a competing service is high, see e.g., implosion of Zuckerberg’s Threads.
Model S.
Model 3.
Model X.
Hmm.
Actually, it's better than that:
Model S
Model 3 (he wanted to use Model E, but Ford was already using it for an electric car)
Model X
Model Y
Is he purposely trying to destroy the properties he has purchased?
How about providing a single example of a company of his that has failed or a property he has purchased that has been destroyed?
The man went from being a penniless immigrant to the richest man in the world in about twenty years, why can't you ignorant assholes do the same if Musk is such an idiot?
No the name was not Twitter’s “most valuable” asset. Their massive user base and very high average daily engagement rate of over 27 minutes is their biggest asset. User engagement increased in the same period that Threads launched bragged about 100 million sign ups and saw the 20% of sign ups who actually engage with the app drop from seven minutes a day to damned near zero. Advertising is the revenue model and nothing drives ad sales like the reliable daily delivery of eyeballs that X-Twitter has.
All the S3X talk is reminding me of some Apple folklore.
In the late 80s, Apple released a series of Macs based on the Motorola 68030 processor. At the time, these were the fastest, top-of-the-line Macs.
The first of these was the Macintosh IIx, which has a large, traditional desktop computer. It was followed later by other desktop models with names like Macintosh IIcx and Macintosh IIfx.
Apple found a way to put the guts of the IIx model into a case the same size as the much more compact Macintosh SE. Folklore has it there was brief consideration of naming it the Macintosh SE/x, but they chickened out and named it the Macintosh SE/30 instead.
Anybody talking about Threads right now?
Mike (MJB Wolf): "No the name was not Twitter’s “most valuable” asset. Their massive user base and very high average daily engagement rate of over 27 minutes is their biggest asset."
This is no time for rational business analytics! Dumb Lefties and LLR-lefties are afoot and they have political scores to settle!
Thank you, Drago. Your comment was a pleasant surprise on this old thread. Only the stupidest marketing related comments rise to the level I feel compelled to correct. Those stats jumped out at me the day news broke about Zuck's failed new competitor to X.
But I'm really here to follow up on and extend my reply to something else way up thread:
There might be a planet X in our solar system, with an excentric orbit that takes several thousand years. Gravitational forces indicate that possibility.
My recollection of that exchange, originally prompted by Lloyd in the second comment, is that today brings an update in Planet X news although the term was not used in the excerpt I saw on Instapundit (full ScienceAlert.com article here). But it is used in the full write-up and this is exactly the gravitational data I was referencing above.
(Added 7/28/2023) I'll comment on a current article again if its interesting. Too bad all the legal stuff that used to draw so many is so infrequent now, probably because no interesting or complicated court matters are in the news lately, but at least the letter X has appeal.
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