AP; Agence France-Presse pursues copyright case against X, formerly known as Twitter
"AP; Agence France-Presse pursues copyright case against X, formerly known as Twitter "France’s international news agency, Agence France-Presse, says it is pursuing a copyright case against X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, in an effort to secure potential payment for its news content."
Blake Brittain, Reuters; Meta, Microsoft, hundreds more own trademarks to new Twitter name
"Billionaire Elon Musk's decision to rebrand Twitter as X could be complicated legally: companies including Meta (META.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) already have intellectual property rights to the same letter.
X is so widely used and cited in trademarks that it is a candidate for legal challenges - and the company formerly known as Twitter could face its own issues defending its X brand in the future.
"There's a 100% chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody," said trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who said he counted nearly 900 active U.S. trademark registrations that already cover the letter X in a wide range of industries."
Mike Redmond, UPROXX ; Elon Musk Apparently Didn’t Bother To Make Basic Preparations Ahead Of His Chaotic, Comical Rebranding Of Twitter As ‘X’ Despite His Decades-Long Obsession With The Letter
"To the surprise of no one, there was a whole lot of diligence left on the table.
Despite Musk having a decades-long obsession with the name X, to the point that it led to his ouster at PayPal, it appears that nobody at Twitter thought to check if anyone had already registered the X trademark. Turns out, Musk’s rival Mark Zuckerberg is already sitting on the name along with 900 other copyright registrations (including Microsoft). Whoops."
Max Tani, Semarfor; Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over Threads
"Twitter is threatening legal action against Meta over its new text-based “Twitter killer” platform, accusing the social media giant of poaching former employees to create a “copycat” application.
On Wednesday, Instagram parent company Meta introduced Threads, a text-based companion to Instagram that resembles Twitter and other text-based social platforms. Just hours later, a lawyer for Twitter, Alex Spiro, sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg accusing the company of engaging in “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.”
“Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information,” Spiro wrote in a letter obtained exclusively by Semafor. “Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or use of its intellectual property by Meta.”
Spiro accused Meta of hiring dozens of former Twitter employees who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information.”
RACHEL SHIN, Forbes; Elon Musk called copyright a ‘plague on humanity’ and now he’s being sued for $250 million by music publishers who claim Twitter stole their content
"A group of music companies is suing Twitter for over $250 million, claiming the platform has ignored many copyright violation notices. The coalition is composed of 17 music publishers, including such big names as Sony Music Publishing, Universal Music Corp., and Big Machine Music. One problem for Elon Musk in defending the lawsuit is that he’s said he considers copyright a “plague on humanity.”"
Richard Lawler,, The Verge ; Twitter sued for $250 million by music publishers over ‘massive’ copyright infringement
"The National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) is suing Twitter on behalf of 17 music publishers representing the biggest artists in the business. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Tennessee, claims the company "fuels its business with countless infringing copies of musical compositions, violating Publishers' and others' exclusive rights under copyright law."
It also has a list of 1,700 or so songs (included below) that the publishers say have been included in multiple copyright notices to Twitter without the company doing anything about it, asking the court to fine Twitter up to $150,000 for each violation."
PESALA BANDARA, PetaPixel; Photo Agency Sues Twitter for $228.9 Million Over Copyright Infringement
"Photo agency Backgrid and ten anonymous defendants have sued Twitter for allegedly failing to take down more than 1,500 photographs of celebrities owned by them and illegally posted to the platform by users.
According to the lawsuit filed on December 30, 2022, Backgrid alleges it sent over 6,700 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices to Twitter requesting the removal of its copyrighted photos, but Twitter failed to respond or take down a single image.
Furthermore, Backgrid claims that its images were posted continuously by some Twitter users, but the social media platform failed to suspend any accounts under its “repeat infringer” policy."
Paul Tassi, Forbes; Twitter’s Broken Its Copyright Strike System, Users Are Uploading Full Movies
"It should be fairly obvious to anyone what kind of liability it opens Twitter up to if their copyright system is non-functional, and its newly limited pool of workers are going to need to manually hunt down infringers. Once media companies get wind of this, we could see Twitter hit with all sort of DMCA claims and potential legal issues if they can’t get a handle on this quickly. I’m picturing Disney content starting to be uploaded here and them going nuclear."
"A federal appeals court on Friday knocked out all of the parts of two database search patents that were challenged at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by social media sites Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter."
