X Social Media is suing X, a social media company

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 708 points – X Social Media is suing X, a social media company
theverge.com

X Social Media is suing X, a social media company::Elon Musk’s X is being sued by a Florida company called X Social Media for alleged unfair competition and trademark violations that it says have resulted in lost revenue.

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I like the fact that the article had to refer to the non-Musk site as XSM instead of its full name of 'X Social Media' because it would just make the article too confusing to use the proper name.

That perfectly illustrates the point.

I suppose it also means that if XSM lose the case because X is too generic, anyone can then set up a rival social media company also called X.

They can probably use the same logo too as it's just Unicode.

I'm just amazed that it turns out there's actually 2 people who think this is a good name for a social media website.

There is a good chance that there are A-W, Y and Z social media companies too. Some may be legit (eg. marketing on existing social media platforms), and others more for trademark squatting.

There aren't. The first company is an ad agency that specializes in social media.

So is apple. Just because it's generic doesn't mean it's not protected by trademark law. Trademarks are also first come first serve, exclusive to a given industry (so you could call your company Apple or X, but it better be not in a business where it's already trademarked). They're also use it or lose it, and you basically have to sue others using it if you want to keep it.

Obviously the logo isn't just the character X, it's a character X in particular font. If they used the same one they would be violating their trademark.

I really want X.org to get some massive compensation for Elon's theft of their logo.

Took this in London the other day.

It's too common a symbol for X.org to have much of a shot because they're not competitors. This "X Social Media" might have a stronger claim if they've actually used and defended a trademark specifically in the social space.

Except their logo wasn't stolen.

X is using a standard Unicode symbol.

Is something like a unicode symbol even valid as a trademark?

Probably not protectable, no. It has to be in use in commerce and distinctive. That said, with enough money you can buy enough lawyers to warp reality, so who knows.

Which one?

𝕏 (U+1D54F) and/or 𝕩 (U+1D569)

If you search blackboard bold or double-struck letters you can find more.

So basically musk is so cheap (and toxic) he can't even convince any graphic designers to work for him.

Lol

Its probably still too different for that, but I am not against them trying of course.

Apple has successfully trademarked everything that remotely looks like an apple with a bite taken out - there's a good chance it'll work

I like how they make a deal with Apple Records in the 80s that allowed both companies to use similar logos so long as Apple Computers didn't sell music and Apple Records didn't sell computers.

Then when iTunes became Apple's #1 product in the 2000s Apple successfully defended itself in court claiming that digital downloads were just 1s and 0s, so Apple Computers never sold music.

Did it actually go to trial? The line I heard was that when developing the iPod/iTunes they simply had a budget item for "Settlement with Apple Records".

What is worse than an apple with a bite taken out and a worm in it?

An apple with a bite taken out and half a worm in it!

That joke contained an apple with a bite taken out of it, you can expect to hear from Apple's lawyers soon.

X.XXX

Whatever happened to all the buzz about the internet finally giving porn sites their own top-level domain.

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That lawsuit simply says : "acquire me, acquire me, O Holy Musk, acquire me..."

Which is good in my opinion.

Ol' Musky just went "I want Twitter to be named X" and hoped reality would shape to his thoughts.

And now, some random person who made a shitty shell company for a few hundred bucks gets to get a couple mil because baby Elong Muskrat didn't bother to do his homework.

I'm glad I'm not the only one seeing this as someone praying for a check.

With Musk's fetish for all things "X", now may be the time to start squatting trademarks.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

It was bound to happen eventually: a company has filed a lawsuit in federal court against Elon Musk’s X Corp. over its renaming of Twitter (via Reuters).

The company in question is X Social Media LLC, an ad agency from Florida that alleges X Corp. is guilty of violating Florida common law because of “unfair competition and trademark and service mark infringement,” as well as the state’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

X Social Media (hereafter referred to as XSM to make this article easier to write) writes in the complaint that it has used its registered trademark, “X SOCIALMEDIA,” continuously since 2016.

XSM claims it has “already suffered loss in revenue that correlates with X Corp.’s rebrand and use of the mark ‘X.’”

It’s unclear how strong X Social Media’s case will ultimately be.

Law professor Alexandra Roberts told The Verge earlier this year that the “crowded field” of “X” trademarks could make it hard for any individual X-branded service to enforce a claim against another — whether that’s Musk’s X or a company like X Social Media.

The original article contains 177 words, the summary contains 178 words. Saved -1%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Bot dropping the ball big time.

You have to applaud the fact the bot did correctly report a negative savings and did not show us whatever the bot equivalent is of a seg fault.

Well at least it didn't save us -10^100% and just post the text equivalent of a ZIP bomb

fwiw, the bot mangled some text around The Verge with some nbsp and that's what makes up the -1%, the text is otherwise identical

Sorry who is suing who now?

X is suing X. X is a social media company, and so is X. I hope that clears things up!

Got it! At first I thought it was X suing X, but no its X suing X!

Reminds me of the time my Ex met an Ex with their Ex. Told me never to worry about it for some X reason, but I dont remember now.

So the people using Twitter are suing Twitter?

Former Twitter is just called X, but the other company is X Social Media.

Downvote Musk spam.

The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring him and his businesses stay in the headlines every day. Don’t be a useful idiot.

Technically they are not exactly on the same field which could allow using similar trademarks. But on the other hand in this case X's use of X could be reasonably argued to be very confusing for customers and therefore violating X's trademark.

The article says it is "an ad agency".

Makes me curious: why are they calling themselves "Social Media"?

Probably because Social Media is their ad platform.

X used to be an ad agency before Musk scared off all their advertisers and turned it into a subscription bullshit delivery service

Doesn't all corpo social media make their money through ads? I think I remember Zuccerbot responding "we sell advertising" when the American politicians asked him what Facebook actually does.