Twitter's increasingly protective commercial strategy of gaining control of the third-party app-osphere starts looking a little wobbly when it comes to trademarks, registration 3699994 being the latest case in point.
Twitter was apparently a little late to file for various obvious trademarks – the word "tweet" being one. The firm Twittad originally filed for "tweet" as part of its strapline "let your ad meet tweets" in July 2008, but Twitter has moved to sue the firm and attempt to have its trademark registration cancelled.
"The defendant's registration unfairly exploits the widespread association by the consuming public of the market 'tweet' with Twitter and threatens to block Twitter from its registration and legitimate uses of its own mark," details the legal filing.
The filing goes on to explain, rather quaintly, that prior to Twitter, "the 'tweet' mark was not generally known to the consuming public beyond its dictionary meaning relating to birdsong, and had no association with web-based social networking and communications services."
Photo by mozzercork on Flickr. Some rights reserved
TechCrunch suggests that Twittad's founder James Eliason seems to be manoeuvring for Twitter to acquire the trademark. With a lawsuit under way, that doesn't seem too likely.
Twitter does own "retweet" and "cotweet" among others. What this trademark battle is about though is not terminology, but about asserting control over interaction with users that ultimately leads to revenue. Would Twitter be using a lawsuit to aggressively pursue a trademark if it was being used by anything other than an advertising company?
