Twitter marketing agency Twittads hands over
The term tweet has been around for a long time now and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what it means, but it may surprise you that Twitter itself has only just recently gained the fully licensed trade mark. The acquisition of the license came as a result of settling a dispute between Twitter and the internet marketing agency Twittad. The dispute between the two companies comes after a second refusal of the application to acquire the tweet trademark by Twitter who has been trying to license the term since early 2009. The argument involved the use of the word tweet in the twitter marketing company Twittads tagline “Let your ad meet tweets”. Twitter’s argument was that the trademark should rightfully belong to them seeing as it was a famously used term before Twittads registered their license, and that the companies use of the word was blocking their own application. The counter point made by Twittads’s CEO was that the term was created not by Twitter but by its users and thus should be fair game for everybody. Despite the bitter argument between the two companies, and the internet marketing agency’s Twitter account being suspended they managed to come to a settlement outside of the courts. Twittads has handed over the trademark to the term “tweet” but is able to keep their tag line as it is. In return Twitter has dropped the law suit and has reinstated the company’s twitter accounts. This result may seem a little one sided, however a confidentiality agreement has been put in place that prevents either company from stating if there was any money involved over the transfer. However, if you are a third party application developer or a social media optimisation service etc that uses the word tweet within your products name or service, you likely have little to worry about. The company has publicly stated that they are not forbidding the use of the term; in fact they encourage its use. They are only looking to enforce the trademark if they come across a project that is confusing or is in some way damaging to their brand. Perhaps part of the reason Twitter was being particularly forceful over this deal was partly down to the fact the promoted twitter marketing that Twittads carries out reduces the revenue that Twitter gets from its own promoted tweets, of which they are currently pushing very strongly.