Twitter secures trademark for 'tweet,' report says
Microblogging site agrees to drop lawsuit challenging Twittad's trademark and restore its Twitter account in exchange for the trademark, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Twitter's long quest to secure the trademark to "tweet" appears to be at an end.
Twittad will transfer the trademark to Twitter in exchange for the microblogging site dropping a lawsuit that challenged the Des Moines-based company's right to the trademark, the company's CEO told The Wall Street Journal. Twitter will also restore the Twitter account for Twittad, which helps Twitter users get paid to tweet ads on the microblogging service.
"We've arrived at a resolution with Twittad that recognizes consistent use of Tweet while supporting the continued success of Twitter ecosystem partners like Twittad," Twitter spokeswoman Lynn Fox said in a statement to the newspaper.
Twitter originally filed for the trademark in April 2009, but the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office preliminarily denied the application after finding that three companies had already applied for trademarks that contained "tweet" in their names.
The effort became more interesting a few months later when Twitter asked a developer to find a new name and user interface because of their similarity to its own service--it was "uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) and the similarity in your UI and our own."
Twittad obtained the trademark after a 2008 application to trademark the phrase "Let Your Ad Meet Tweets" went unopposed.