Elon May Have a Huge Issue Because Microsoft Owns the “X” Trademark

Christ what a fucking moron. Seems to be a running theme with fascists.
- I think that's a requirement

This raises the question, why was a company allowed to trademark a letter?
- You can't trademark a letter. Trademarks are extremely narrow and are only meant to apply in circumstances where one organization's symbol could be confused for another. In general I am very anti-intellectual-property, but trademarks are okay in my book. They are basically for consumer protection.
- It is context sensitive
- @pruwybn @storksforlegs In the future, everytime you use the letter X, even to text, you will be charged a fee of x amount of cents based on your income.
  
  Will you be charged a fee for using the letter as a variable in that statement?
- Eh. If I start my X Laundromat business, Microsoft won't come after me.
- @pruwybn @storksforlegs
  Because money

we wouldn't be at all terribly surprised to know that the billionaire is aware of Microsoft's patent and more than willing to take the title to court.
Patent? lol
- the amount of times I've read an internet article about this topic only to be met with a shockingly trivial mistake present front and center is staggering. the differences between patent, trademark, wordmark, etc. are all easily googleable and yet pretty much every article I've read on this has been using them interchangeably.
  incoming rhetorical question: are these editors orangutans? (before anybody answers, i know editors & authors want to be the first one out the door so they get the most clicks and all that, but it's really not hard to make sure you're at least using the correct word. It seriously took me 20 seconds to find an answer on the difference between patent and trademark)
  
  Of course they made the trivial mistake, because they also made a much, much bigger one. The X trademark as it pertains to social media is owned by Meta, who bought it from Microsoft when they acquired Mixer (which later became Facebook Gaming), including Mixer's X logo.
  
  I think a lot of the issue is the widespread use of the term Intellectual Property which, arguably deliberately, conflates a few completely distinct legal concepts under one umbrella.
  
  Thank you for announcing the rhetorical question. I don’t think I would have been prepared for that.
  
  are these editors orangutans?
  The Librarian would be much more meticulous tyvm.
- omg its raymomf in the wild

I can understand a company like Google (Alphabet) and Facebook (Meta) re-branding their wider business infrastructure. Twitter is just Twitter. X is just nostalgia, and Musk is being totally irresponsible with these announcments. He is a petulant little child, looking for attention and the likes. Damn childish - his entire Twitter venture.
- X is just nostalgia,
  How is 'X' nostalgia?
  
  Elon started x.com back when he was balding.

Whats microsoft doing with X?
Aside from ActiveX, DirectX and Xbox...
- from trademark (note registered in 2003)
  for: providing on-line chat rooms for transmission of messages among computer users concerning video and computer games; providing on-line electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users concerning video and computer games, in class 38
  for: entertainment services, namely, providing interactive multiplayer game services for games played over computer networks and global communications networks; providing computer games and video games downloadable over computer global communications networks; providing information on the video game and computer game industries via the internet; and providing information on computer games, video games, video game consoles and accessories therefor via the internet, in class 41
  in short: basically what they did in the ensuing years with Xbox and Games for Windows - Live
- Xbox Series X, Surface Pro X,
  
  iPhone X.. It’s not like X, the latin letter, is owned and used by Microsoft only.
  
  X-Men, X-ray, X-chromosome, XVideos, Lil Nas X, Final Fantasy X....
  Wait, what were we listing again?

While he's at it, he'll probably start patent trolling Linux community for X window system.
- Maybe this will finally kill Xorg
  
  Wayland: Can I come out now?
  
  Does that sentiment include Xwayland, Xlib, and the X protocol? What's the alternative to X, the Windows Remote Desktop Protocol?
- Aw man, I was trying to angrily shout racist hate speech into the void, but instead I ended up uninstalling Windows completely...
  This confusion is exactly why Elon needs to protect his new trademark!

This just gets better and better

Cisco owned the "iPhone" trademark and was actively using it to sell products. Weirder things have happened.
Apple simply started using it and told Cisco, "Make me stop".
- To which Cisco replied "okay" and forced Apple to agree to an unknown but likely ludicrous licensing fee.
  Twitter got Apple money right now? Because even Elons billions aint shit compared to Microsofts literal trillions.
  
  Twitter got Apple money right now?
  Twitter's got so little money that they can't even pay all their bills, lol.
  Honestly I think they rolled out the new branding without finishing it because they can't afford proper designers or project managers. The site still says "Twitter" all over the place and they can't even trademark the new logo.
  
  Microsoft doesn't have trillions. Where did you get that from?
- Actually iOS, not iPhone. I think if it were iPhone itself, an actually marketed product from either Apple or Cisco, it would have ended a bit differently. But in both cases, it was just iOS, the operating system of the marketed products.
  In both cases, iOS was a selling point of the product, but not the product itself.
  
  No, it was actually iPhone:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_iPhone

Maybe he shoulda just stuck with the bird, or thought of a name that is even a tad more creative. I'm pretty sure a hamster or a piece of paper could do a better job at managing Twitter than Muskrat is right now.
- He killed the canary. There’s no better iconography for how toxic Twitter has become.
- He does it about as well as I'd expect a muskrat to do it, to be fair

It's fine. He just exchanged trademarks with Egosoft https://twitter.com/EGOSOFT/status/1683477783584858115 so he is in the clear 👍
- I'm 99% sure that's a joke, i can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not lmfao
  
  It is obviously a joke

At what point does the game Xcom become involved... That shit has been around forever, and is definitely very close to X.com
- That’s… not how that works.
  The brand isn’t "x.com" either, it’s "X". They don’t even use x.com as a domain.
  Even if it was x.com, a video game being called Xcom wouldn’t be close enough to the website x.com to be able to be confused. It would be different if they both were websites.
  
  They do plan to switch to the x.com domain and already own it.

Knock knock, open up the door, it's a subpoena
Trademark infringement means a judge wants to see ya!
X gonna serve it to ya

Other articles saying Meta owns x hot potato
- Clearly the original was Mythos Games when they produced XCOM. Musk just added a fucking dot and thought that made it "original".

And in #Japan, with #VisualKei #Vkei (#JapaneseRock) band #XJapan.
The frontman #Yoshiki even called out #Twitter Japan of their trademark right (which is legitimate).
- I love X! (not that one) and I love reading this!