A U.S. federal judge in Delaware has granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting the startup Operation Bluebird from using the "Twitter" name for its social media service. The decision represents a partial win for X Corp, the company owned by Elon Musk, as it contests Operation Bluebird's efforts to revive the original Twitter brand. While the court sided with X Corp on the use of the "Twitter" name, the judge also found that X Corp likely abandoned its rights to the "Tweet" trademark and the iconic blue bird logo.
Operation Bluebird, a Virginia-based startup, launched a social media platform under the name "Twitter.now" on August 26, 2026. The company argued that X Corp had abandoned the "Twitter" trademark when it rebranded the platform to "X" in July 2023. This rebranding involved replacing the Twitter name, its blue bird logo, and much of the associated terminology with "X" and "post." Operation Bluebird's general counsel, Stephen Coates, who previously served as a Twitter trademark lawyer, petitioned the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to cancel X Corp's Twitter trademarks and applied to register its own.
X Corp responded by filing a lawsuit in December 2025, asserting that the Twitter trademarks remained its property and that Operation Bluebird's use of the name would cause consumer confusion. U.S. District Judge Colm Connolly, presiding over the case in Delaware, agreed with X Corp that it was likely to prove consumer confusion and trademark infringement regarding the "Twitter" name.
However, Judge Connolly's ruling was not a complete victory for X Corp. He determined that X Corp had likely abandoned its rights to the "Tweet" trademark and the original Twitter bird logo. The judge cited previous statements made by Elon Musk, where he expressed intentions to "bid adieu" to "all the birds" and "cut the Twitter logo off the building with blow torches."
The wider legal dispute between X Corp and Operation Bluebird is ongoing. Operation Bluebird has indicated it will comply with the court order regarding the "Twitter" name and plans to launch "tweet.app." This case highlights the complexities of trademark law in instances of dramatic corporate rebranding, particularly when a globally recognized name is involved.
X Corp, established by Elon Musk in 2023 as the successor to Twitter, Inc., is now a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceXAI, which in turn is a subsidiary of SpaceX. The company owns the social networking service X and has plans to integrate other offerings, including xAI's Grok and Grok Imagine models. Despite the rebranding, X Corp has continued to defend the Twitter trademark, filing renewal registrations in 2023 that were approved in 2024.
The company has maintained that a rebrand does not equate to trademark abandonment, noting that millions of users still access the platform through twitter.com and refer to it as Twitter. X Corp's legal strategy has involved demonstrating continued, albeit reduced, use of the Twitter brand elements. This includes the persistence of twitter.com redirecting to X, older applications displaying the bird logo, and third-party sites using old Twitter favicons.
The legal proceedings will continue to examine granular evidence of use and Musk's public statements regarding the discontinuation of the Twitter brand. The outcome of this litigation could set a precedent for how trademark law applies to companies that undergo significant rebranding and publicly distance themselves from their original identities.