The social media platform he has baptized as “X” may become a beloved target for litigations.

Bad news for the company that owns a social media platform formerly known as Twitter – currently just “X”. At least two IT giants, of which one is a competitor, are entitled to sue the platform’s owner, billionaire Elon Musk, and seek trademark infringement reparations.

Microsoft, for example, registered the trademark “X” related to its Xbox with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in March 2003.

"Microsoft owns a trademark for X [and]… Musk has destroyed a loved and strong brand, for potential years of litigation, and potentially no brand," Andres Guadamuz, a faculty member in intellectual property law at the Unversity of Sussex, said in his Twitter/X account, suggesting that Musk could well face a serious legal struggle in the months or years ahead. 

Other Twitter users claimed that the Microsoft patent for X has expired and Musk has nothing to worry about it.

The purpose Microsoft has saved this trademark for itself is coincidentally similar for what Musk actually uses X: providing online chat rooms for transmission of messages among computer users […], bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users […].” 

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Interestingly, Elon Musk recently threatened to sue Microsoft over OpenAI's “AI training practices using unlawfully-acquired Twitter data.” Bil Gates’ company is an investor and partner of OpenAI.

But there’s more: Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, too, has a registered “X” trademark. “The mark consists of a stylized letter "X". The left side of the "X" is white and the right side of the "X" is blue. The shaded square carrier represents background only and is not a part of the mark,” according to the record in the USPTO official website. 

Meta registered this trademark specifically for social networking services, even though the design of the letter look different.

Attorneys speaking to Reuters and Business Insider remarked that there are solid chances of lawsuits getting filed against the entrepreneur, who acquired Twitter almost one year ago for an astonishing 44 billion dollars. 

In fact, there are hundreds of trademarks for the letter X in the US alone. Perhaps that’s the reason why Musk has not commented and does not seem to be bothered by his rivals’ ownership of X trademarks.

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