X Corp. is suing Operation Bluebird, a recently-announced startup that aims to reclaim the Twitter brand for a new social network. In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, the Elon Musk-owned company alleges Operation Bluebird is “brazenly attempting to steal” Twitter’s trademarks, claiming “Twitter never left and continues to be exclusively owned by X Corp.”
Last week, Operation Bluebird filed a petition asking the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to cancel X Corp.’s ownership of the “Twitter” and “Tweet” trademarks. It alleged X Corp. “legally abandoned its rights” to Twitter’s brand with “no intention to resume use.” At the same time, Operation Bluebird filed a trademark application for Twitter as part of plans to launch a new site, called Twitter.new.
Now, X Corp. argues that its rebrand of the social media site “is not an abandonment of trademark rights.” It says that users continue to refer to X as “Twitter” and posts as “tweets,” while some websites still display Twitter’s bird-shaped favicon when linking users to X. The lawsuit adds that as of December 11th, 2025, more than four million users accessed X through the “twitter.com” domain. X began redirecting traffic from twitter.com to x.com last year.
Bluebird wants to reclaim Twitter’s ‘abandoned’ trademarks for a new social network
Operation Bluebird has already started taking reservations for account handles on its Twitter.new site, which X Corp. claims the startup is using to “draw a false association between X Corp. and Bluebird’s ‘new’ product” by using a logo, name, and color scheme similar to Twitter.
“Bluebird has made no secret of the fact that it is trying to trade on TWITTER’s goodwill and reputation,” the lawsuit claims.
theverge.com
