Asian markets mostly dipped Wednesday, following a downbeat lead from Wall Street as investors braced for Fed boss Jerome Powell's...

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 31, 2023--

Hackers gained personal information about thousands of people who applied to become pilots at American and Southwest airlines

The world’s second-biggest carbon-credits project has halted its operations after the government of Zimbabwe said earlier this year

BROOKLYN, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 11, 2023--

We didn’t think it was possible, but Elon Musk’s tenure at Twitter took an even stranger turn this week after he rebranded the social media platform to “X” out of the blue. It turns out Musk has been obsessed with naming things after the letter all his career, but it still came as a big surprise that he decided to change the name of an internationally recognised brand overnight to something that sounds more like a porn site or gentleman’s club. The logo is a pretty generic graphic, which replaced the famous blue Twitter bird after Musk crowdsourced ideas from users last weekend. It’s left people with more questions than answers at this point – one of them surrounds the issue of Microsoft and potential disputes over the letter “X” as a trademark. “X” is pretty common in names of companies and organisations and the likes of Meta and Microsoft reportedly have intellectual property rights around the letter “X”. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter In fact, as Reuters reports, the likelihood is that Twitter – now "X" – could well face legal action over the name change. "There's a 100 per cent chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody," said trademark attorney Josh Gerben. According to Gerben, there are close to 900 active U.S. trademark registrations surrounding the letter “X”. Microsoft does indeed have an X trademark which it’s held since 2003. However, it’s related to communications about its Xbox video game system. Meta Platforms also owns a trademark for an “X”, which is related to software and social media. According to Gerben, the two companies are unlikely to sue over the Twitter name change unless they believe the move encroaches on their brand equity. Douglas Masters, who is a trademark attorney at law firm Loeb & Loeb, said [via Reuters]: "Given the difficulty in protecting a single letter, especially one as popular commercially as 'X', Twitter's protection is likely to be confined to very similar graphics to their X logo. "The logo does not have much distinctive about it, so the protection will be very narrow." Social media user Keith Edwards posted on the topic by uploading a screen grab of Microsoft’s 2003 patent for “X”, writing: “Microsoft owns the trademark for X. This is just too good.” A community note was added to the post which read: Microsoft only holds this trademark for videogame-related services; this wouldn't affect Twitter. “However, Meta holds the ‘X’ trademark for ‘online social networking services... social networking services in the fields of entertainment, gaming and application development…’” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Google confirmed it will lay off hundreds of staff members who helped recruit and hire employees, as Silicon Valley continues its cost-cutting efforts.

Millions of people are expected to hit airports and highways in record numbers over the Thanksgiving holiday

By Leika Kihara TOKYO Some Bank of Japan board members said domestic inflation might hold above the central

HONG KONG--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 24, 2023--

FALLS CHURCH, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 17, 2023--

China's unfair trade practices have forced the European Union to become more assertive in its dealings with the world's second largest economy, the bloc's commissioner for trade said Monday during a trip to Beijing.