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."
Someone else had the trademark.
