A month ago, the folks at Twitter had applied a trademark for “tweet” and this had sparked off controversy among developers who were worried that the trademark would affect their applications consisting of the word “Tweet”. Biz Stone, one of the co-founders of Twitter, said “we have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective” in a blog post dated July 1. Standing from a developer’s perspective, I heaved a sigh of relief and rejoice with my other fellow friends working in the app development sector.
What made surprised me was that the USPTO (US Patent and Trademarks Office) rejected the trademark application just hours after Stone’s post and on the very same day. According to their records (#77715815), Twitter filed for a trademark on April 16, 2009 and was turned down on July 1, 2009.
Besides this coincidental incident, Stone had failed to reveal that the trademark application was filed a few months in advance before the news broke out. The main reason why it was rejected was because several companies had already filed for similar trademarks on names that contained the word “tweet.” For example, Tweetmarks, Cotweet and Tweetphoto had applied the trademark way earlier than the world’s most popular micro-blogging platform.