Also, how the hell could Microsoft get a patent for X in 2003 when X has been around since 1984, and is pretty much a direct competitor? This makes no sense at all.

Trademarks only cover very significant uses. Microsoft can (and apparently did) trademark X in connection to the Xbox, so competitors can't make a game console called an XStation or PlayStation X, but people not making video game consoles aren't affected.

[Edit: Man, Lemmy is weird. I deleted this comment right after posting it because I thought it was redundant. I only undeleted it because I saw it was the top-rated comment in its sub-thread.]

“But I own the website! That’s no fair!”

It's not the letter x it's a Unicode symbol that looks like the letter x.

He already lost that fight to Mercedes for the letter E.

Pretty sure Google owns that.

Trademarks are very narrow. From my quick search Microsoft has 'X' marks in relation to Excel and Xbox.

Meta's trademarks actually has the class, 'Online social networking services,' that will overlap with Twitter's new name.

From what I understand, MS owns it in regards gaming, and Meta owns it in regards to social media.

Probably in different industries. I saw the MS patent is for game related stuff. I would assume metas is for social media stuff, or some other field they're involved in.

Trademark, not copyright. It means that you can't make something and call it "X" if there's any chance that your "X" and their "X" might get mixed up. Google ran into this same problem when they created "Alphabet" - it was already a trademark of some German car manufacturer (probably Audi or BMW), but the court ruled that "Alphabet the car company" and "Alphabet the online services company" are far enough apart that the average user probably won't confuse one for the other (although the Dove soap and Dove chocolate makes me doubt it). Twitter and Microsoft both offer online services. It might be enough of an overlap to constitute a trademark violation.

Copyright and trademarks are different things. In this case it looks like it applies mainly to the Xbox "X" logo like is seen on this (hilarious) page of the filing and is only for things related to messaging and gaming, so it's not as broad as it sounds. Based on a cursory look at Google results from before July 1st, I can't find any examples of Microsoft actually suing anyone for using the letter X, either.

It's used a lot for spot-marking.

Hard to tell if he's winning or losing. If he's being incentivized to destroy the integrity of a mainstream information-sharing platform, he's done well. If he in any way wanted to run the company, he's done laughably bad. I guess time will tell