‘Twitter never left:’ X sues Operation Bluebird for trademark infringement

X Corp. is suing Operation Bluebird, a recently-announced startup that aims to reclaim the Twitter brand for a new social network. In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, the Elon Musk-owned company alleges Operation Bluebird is “brazenly attempting to steal” Twitter’s trademarks, claiming “Twitter never left and continues to be exclusively owned by X Corp.”

Last week, Operation Bluebird filed a petition asking the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to cancel X Corp.’s ownership of the “Twitter” and “Tweet” trademarks. It alleged X Corp. “legally abandoned its rights” to Twitter’s brand with “no intention to resume use.” At the same time, Operation Bluebird filed a trademark application for Twitter as part of plans to launch a new site, called Twitter.new.

Now, X Corp. argues that its rebrand of the social media site “is not an abandonment of trademark rights.” It says that users continue to refer to X as “Twitter” and posts as “tweets,” while some websites still display Twitter’s bird-shaped favicon when linking users to X. The lawsuit adds that as of December 11th, 2025, more than four million users accessed X through the “twitter.com” domain. X began redirecting traffic from twitter.com to x.com last year.

Operation Bluebird has already started taking reservations for account handles on its Twitter.new site, which X Corp. claims the startup is using to “draw a false association between X Corp. and Bluebird’s ‘new’ product” by using a logo, name, and color scheme similar to Twitter.

“Bluebird has made no secret of the fact that it is trying to trade on TWITTER’s goodwill and reputation,” the lawsuit claims. “Although Bluebird could have chosen from nearly limitless options of brand names (like any of X Corp.’s other competitors), it instead wants to capitalize off the goodwill of a brand that is already worth billions of dollars.”

X Corp. asks the court to order Operation Bluebird to stop using trademarks related to the Twitter brand, as well as for the USPTO to deny and invalidate the startup’s application for the Twitter trademark. It also asks the court to award X Corp. “damages suffered as a result of Bluebird’s copyright infringement.”

Trademark attorney Josh Gerben tells The Verge that “X Corp. didn’t have to file the lawsuit,” as the company “could have defended the cancellation petition at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board” instead. “This case shows that while X Corp. may have tried to bury the Twitter brand, they clearly aren’t ready to let anyone else dig it up,” Gerben says.

Operation Bluebird didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.