Twitter's rebranding to X.com may get complicated as Microsoft and Meta own the trademark

Elon Musk may have legal huddles on his hands as he attempts to rebrand Twitter as X.com with Microsoft and Meta both holding the important trademarks.

In case you missed it, over the weekend Elon Musk revealed his intentions to ditch Twitter Blue bird logo in favor X which was followed up by Musk making it official by redirecting X.com to Twitter. However, the rebranding plans may hit a legal roadblock as certain trademarks are currently owned by Meta and Microsoft. As spotted by Reuters, Microsoft currently owns a part of "X" trademark, and the Redmond giant has done so since 2003. This covers mostly Microsoft gaming lineup including Xbox hardware, not to mention that Twitter's new logo looks similar to the Xbox logo. Meta, on the other hand, trademarked a blue and white "X" logo in 2019 which the company notes is for social networking.

While there is no word on if any of the companies will take a legal route, this may impact Twitter's plan to go ahead with the official rebranding. Speaking to Reuters, trademark attorney Josh Gerben noted that, "There's a 100% chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody". He further noted that there are "nearly 900 active U.S. trademark registrations that already cover the letter X in a wide range of industries."

Musk has been working hard to navigate through the various issues surrounding Twitter since the acquisition late last year. With the company facing lawsuits from former employees, advertisers leaving the platform, a security breach that allowed everyone to see Twitter Circle tweets, and multiple outages, it has been a rocky ride for Musk's latest experiment.