No Tweet Trademark for Twitter?

Last month, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone penned a blog post in which he discussed the company's efforts to trademark the term “Tweet”, but it appears that the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is not making that quest very easy.

Blogger Sam Johnston uncovered some documents that suggest the USPTO slapped Twitter with a partial rejection of its application on the same day as Stone's blog post.

Twitter filed its application on April 16. Stone posted his blog post on July 1 around 1:30pm Eastern time. Around 8:30pm that same day, the USPTO initiated an X-Search, an automated search of its system the agency uses to determine if any existing trademarks conflict with those on pending applications.

By 9pm, the agency fired off a letter to Twitter that said it had not uncovered any existing “Tweet” trademarks, but it did find three pending applications that used some form of the word Tweet — Tweetmarks, Cotweet, and Tweetphoto — and might therefore conflict with Twitter's own application. The USPTO has responded to all three Tweet-related applications and asked the applicants to answer questions about their plans.

But until those responses have been collected and the USPTO has handed down final decisions on Tweetmarks, Cotweet, and Tweetphoto, Twitter's quest to trademark Tweet has been suspended “because of a likelihood of confusion between the two marks,” the agency said.

via No Tweet Trademark for Twitter? – AppScout.