Twitter is suing one of its third-party developers in its battle to win trademark registration of the term “tweet.”
Twittad, an online advertising service, filed its trademark application for “Let Your Ad Meet Tweets,” in 2008. In a lawsuit filed last week, Twitter asked a California court to cancel that trademark, claiming the phrase “unfairly exploits the widespread association by the consuming public of the mark TWEET with Twitter, and threatens to block Twitter from its registration and legitimate uses of its own mark.”
Twitter owns trademarks for terms like “retweet” and “cotweet,” but not “tweet.” Several third-party developers registered the trademark first, and for years Twitter has been arguing that it is the rightful owner of the term.
The lawsuit is Twitter’s latest battle move as it tries to manage tenuous relationships with developers who have claimed important trademarks or cultivated a wealth of Twitter users through unique tools, like the Tweetie iPhone app or the TweetDeck message organizer. Twitter acquired both of those companies, but continues to negotiate with others that rely on its platform for their business.
Twitter claims in its complaint against Twittad that it made “numerous attempts to resolve the dispute amicably” before filing the lawsuit. It has since suspended Twittad’s Twitter account.
On the same day Twitter filed the lawsuit, it also announced reaching the milestone of 100m active users on its site.
April Dembosky