In April 2007, Twitter, Inc. filed application no. 77166246 to register the trademark TWITTER with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. (Twitter is the ever-more-popular tool that enables “friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” It’s fun. You should try it if you’re not using it already. And you can start by following me.)
Anyway, in February the application reached the point where it was published for opposition. That means that any other trademark owner out there who feels it would be damaged by the TWITTER mark being registered can oppose the application in the Trademark Office.
On March 14, 2008, Research in Motion (of Blackberry fame) stepped up and requested an extention of time to oppose the TWITTER application. I ran a quick search for registered marks owned by Research in Motion (you can do that yourself here), but didn’t see anything close to “Twitter”. Can anyone think of an unregistered mark that RIM owns that is similar to TWITTER? Or any other reason why RIM would want to oppose this application? Comments are open, as they have been for some time.
August 28, 2008
Evan,
I can not think of any unregistared marks, but was curious if you new of the outcome of this situation. Did anything come of it over the last few months? Did RIM oppose the application? If so, I'm curious if we now know why.