We live in an age where three massively bloated companies are going to battle it out over who owns a letter.
That asteroid won’t come soon enough.
I'm voting Giant Meteor 2024
Virus emerging from the melting permafrost is my guess.
Now you’ve given me something else to worry about…
Oh no it's not my guess, it's the candidate I'm voting for in the 2024 Presidential election.
Blue Ocean Event 2027 is looking pretty likely, so there's not too long to wait.
Hey! I'm enjoying the show here
Where cagefight. 🦧
I hope all three teams lose
I hope I'm not alone in finding it utterly ridiculous that a company can literally hold rights over a single letter.
Keep in mind that it's in a particular context. It seems a bit ridiculous as a headline, but if they were actively using the branding, it might not seem so ridiculous: imagine Facebook (I will not call them Meta) is already operating a social media site for posting short thoughts called X with the TLD social (hypothetically). And they've been operating it as X for 10 years. Then Elon does this. Clearly Facebook has a suit because that's straight-up infringement.
This is a little more hazy because Facebook isn't actively using their X trademark, and it's not exactly the same as Twitter. But they do hold the rights to it (as far as I can tell from the one tweet (xeet?) about it). And it's not (quite) as ridiculous as it sounds.
Also,
Twitter auto-replied to Insider's request for comment with a message saying that the communications department would get back to us soon.
Is this a euphemism for the poop emoji??
A “tweet” is now an “x”. So somebody x’d that x was already trademarked. Dumb as fuck. My 8 year old is even over here calling Elon a dumbass.
So instead of tweeting something do they now "X it out"?
Yes. And for Twitter videos they are now “x-videos”. Should help draw traffic to the site.
Boy, they got lucky nobody already has that
so, I'm just going out on a limb here, but instead of liking something, do you now "x-rate" something?
No, when you downvote the X simply flips upside down to clearly show you disliked it.
Tell that potty-mouth to watch their language!
I do but he can’t help to shit on Elon. Gotta pick your battles as a parent and all.
No. musk retired the poop emoji auto reply recently for the “we’ll get back to you soon”
Yeah and it's getting in the way of my schadenfreude
If it makes you feel any better, the CEO of Oracle, Larry Ellison, pretty much bought out the entire island of Lanai from the state of Hawaii.
So a letter doesn’t surprise me too much.
I just saw another headline that says Microsoft has it?
Microsoft has it for Xbox, so it would be difficult to apply here.
Meta has it for a social media and I stant messaging app...
If they don't challenge this, they're basically giving it away for free. So they pretty much have to challenge
I think it might originally be for DirectX. Which is where the xbox got its name iirc. (DirectX Box)
You're correct. They used X in a lot of gaming stuff back then like Microsoft Flight Simulator X. Also they had some kind of window system that relates to DirectX. I think DirectX may have been named after the window software.
The X in DirectX is a placeholder, because it’s a suite of APIs.
DirectShow, DirectSound, DirectMusic, Direct3D, ect.
Its like “Direct____”
I never put that together!
Flight Simulator X is because X is a cooler way to write 10. Apple did that with Mac OS too. Using roman numerals alone cannot be trade marked.
Sort of. DirectX was an entire collection of programming applications, not the application itself. Basically, the X was a stand-in for all the various Direct APIs that made up the suite. DirectDraw was the window one you’re probably thinking of. There was also Direct3D, DirectSound, DirectMusic, and DirectPlay.
Another way to think about it is that it’s akin to AdobeX. There’s Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Acrobat, etc…
That being said, it was 100% the basis for the Xbox’s name. It was a DirectX Box, and DirectX was (at least at first) the primary method of writing games for the console. And since Windows also used DirectX, it made games much easier to port to PC. By that point, the X had sort of taken on a life of its own, and Microsoft started using it simply as a way to signify that something was made for the Xbox. Xinput, for instance, is the protocol that Xbox controllers use. But the X doesn’t stand for anything in that case, except to signify that it was designed for use with the Xbox.
Lots of big companies register lots of really dumb trademarks, even for things that they don't end up producing. Most of them would be thrown out in court.
ActiveX
directX
Xbox (series X)
Any more?
Explains a lot.
Really would be cool to stop seeing this shit all over the front page. Pretty sure a lot of us are here because we don't care about these sites.
Memmy added the ability to filter posts by keywords recently. Very useful ;)
I need this on Jerboa. My filtered list on RiF was fucking huge, and you can bet fucking "elon", "musk" and "elon musk" was in it (with Marvel, Star Wars and other cultural spam that I don't give a shit about).
Oh please please please be true
What's going on?! Everyone claiming they own X... while in fact everyone owns X...
yes comrade we do own X
Well, throw it in the closet with the electric guitar, the karate suit, the Boring Company, and that crazy vacuum train thing. Just another one of Musk's dumb ideas that never got anywhere.
This is like reading about politics. Just when I think things can’t get any stupider…
Edit:
Twitter auto-replied to Insider's request for comment with a message saying that the communications department would get back to us soon.
They got an actual reply? No infamous 💩 emoji? That’s a story in itself.
Ahahahahhahahaaahahaaaaaaa..... sobs in poor
Didn’t Xfinity recently rebrand itself to use just an X for most things, too?
I’m beginning to question this guy’s decision making skills /s
All of the cage fight crap, and the Threads crap are a big show leading to Meta buying Twitter, Musk recouping some of his losses, and Zuckerberg getting his hands on the worlds personal data again to fire his intelligence contracts back up.
Idk if he did this rebranding shit just to get revenge on the Zuck
Didn't Meta also infringe on some other companies mark, yet who still is known for Meta now?
I just saw another post saying Microsoft is claiming to own the trademark for "X."
It's a trademark, though. X is too generic to copyright, and a trademark is more or less just a logo; which can be unique for all 3 or even more people who want to use "X." Just don't make it look like the others' logos.
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