Twitter’s rebrand to X is effectively underway. The identify and iconic hen emblem have been stripped from the corporate’s San Francisco headquarters, and an “X” has changed the blue hen atop twitter.com. Elon Musk has stated the change is about extra than simply the identify. He needs to show the service previously referred to as Twitter into an that additionally encompasses and monetary companies.
However the rebrand may pose vital authorized and monetary challenges to the corporate, which has struggled since an advertiser exodus minimize the corporate’s advert income by greater than 50 %. To begin, there are a whole lot of corporations, together with Microsoft and Meta, that personal emblems for variations of “X.” That might open the door to lawsuits and different authorized complications for Musk.
Shubha Ghosh, a regulation professor at Syracuse College, says that lawsuits are “fairly frequent” when main corporations rebrand and alter their names and logos. “I am sort of shocked he picked X as a result of it is not that particular,” he says. “It is problematic within the sense that it is not one thing you’ll be able to simply instantly do with out anyone noticing and presumably suing.”
Trademark lawyer Josh Gerben that he counted nearly 900 different corporations with emblems on “X.” And whereas not all of them will be capable of credibly declare that the corporate previously referred to as Twitter is interfering with their model, it makes X a straightforward goal.
“There’s a few 100% chance that Twitter/X might be sued by each opportunistic and bonafide plaintiffs over the brand new identify,” Gerben . “The corporate may simply spend tens of tens of millions (if not $100+ million) in authorized charges and settlement prices trying to accumulate trademark registrations for ‘X’ and in coping with the litigation that’s prone to end result from the rebrand.”
For a similar causes, Twitter’s new X branding may additionally show tough to defend, particularly internationally. “The prospect that @elonmusk will be capable of efficiently register a trademark for ‘X’ for all of the companies he intends to offer, in each nation he needs to offer them in, may be very low,” Gerben wrote.
Even when Twitter is ready to fend off authorized challenges, there are severe enterprise dangers to putting off a model as globally recognizable as Twitter’s. Bloomberg that some analysts have estimated the identify change may wipe out billions of {dollars} in worth from a model that’s already been broken by Musk.
Ari Lightman, a professor of digital media advertising and marketing at Carnegie Mellon College, says Twitter’s issues go far past potential authorized complications introduced on by its rebrand. “There’s so much occurring that’s diminishing the worth, the utility, the distinctiveness, that Twitter, now X, has within the area,” he says pointing to the rise of Threads and different Twitter rivals. “Tweets are synonymous with this concept of running a blog, or microblogging, it may be very tough to resocialize an idea with the worldwide inhabitants.”