this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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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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[–] [email protected] 226 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 97 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

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.