Twitter Returns as a Startup Fights X for the Name

The Virginia-based company is led by Stephen Coates, who previously served as general counsel during the pre-Musk era of Twitter. Coates and his team argue that Twitter, Tweet, and the bluebird logo were effectively abandoned once Musk moved the platform under the X name. Operation Bluebird filed a petition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in December 2025 seeking to cancel X's ownership of those marks, pointing to Musk's own 2023 statement that the company would "bid adieu to the Twitter brand." A tentative ruling issued in April 2026 suggested the trademarks may no longer be protected, which the company has treated as encouragement to move forward with the launch rather than wait for a final decision.

X has pushed back. Shortly after Operation Bluebird's petition became public, the company updated its terms of service to state that it retains exclusive rights to the Twitter and Tweet trademarks, and it filed a countersuit defending its ownership. X's position is that the brand never actually left, even if the public-facing product now goes by a different name.

Twitter.now describes itself as an attempt to rebuild "a public square organized around trust, transparency, and user choice," and it explicitly states it has no affiliation with X Corp. The platform currently has only a few hundred users and uses a tiered, invite-based signup process meant to slow bot activity while the service and its legal footing both develop. Visually and functionally, it resembles the platform Twitter was before the Musk era, with replies and retweets intact.

One notable addition is Vera, a real-time fact-checking tool built on Google's Gemini model that reviews posts as they're published. Coates has said the company tested the feature by deliberately posting false claims, such as misstating which U.S. president served second, to confirm it flags inaccurate information. He framed the goal as prioritizing free expression while limiting the spread of harmful misinformation, describing the company's approach as "freedom of speech, not freedom of reach."

The core legal question is whether Twitter's trademarks were abandoned under U.S. law, which generally requires three consecutive years of nonuse before a mark can be considered abandoned. X still operates the underlying service, just under a different name, which complicates Operation Bluebird's case even with the favorable tentative ruling. The dispute is expected to continue in court, and the outcome will determine whether Twitter.now can legally keep using the name it has already put into public use.

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