By Libby George LONDON The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) expects to invest a similar amount

By Echo Wang and Anirban Sen NEW YORK China-founded online retailer Shein is working with at least three

Vietnamese automaker Vinfast has plunged right into the crowded and hypercompetitive U.S. auto market, gambling that if it can sell its electric vehicles to finicky Americans, it can succeed anywhere

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told a judge Wednesday that his company's proposed $69 billion takeover of video game-maker Activision Blizzard will be good for the gaming industry

LONDON British manufacturing output dropped over the three months to August by the most in almost three years,

FORT WORTH, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 19, 2023--

Unions representing hospitality workers in Las Vegas said on Tuesday that members employed at MGM Resorts have voted

By Mohi Narayan, Laura Sanicola and Ahmad Ghaddar NEW DELHI/WASHINGTON/LONDON Global refiners are raking in hefty gains, fuelled

Ford is recalling 176,000 Ford Bronco SUVs, model years 2021 to 2023, because the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found drivers and front seat passengers can have difficulty reaching the belt's metal portion in the retracted position.

China's factory sector has contracted for a fourth straight month, while a gauge of its services sector has slipped to a seven month low, raising pressure on policymakers to deliver more stimulus to reinvigorate a stumbling economy as global and domestic demand softens.

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.

Private equity firm Roark Capital Group expects to borrow nearly $5 billion in a little-known debt market to