A Virginia-based startup seeking to revive the Twitter brand and its iconic logo, Operation Bluebird, has launched a new social media platform called Twitter.now despite an ongoing trademark dispute with X Corporation.
Stephen Coates, the startup’s co-founder and former general counsel of Twitter, said the platform was launched after the company spent months awaiting a court decision in its legal battle with X.
“We are a small company, we have investors, and we have a product,” Coates told Ars Technica on Wednesday.
“And we have waited months and months to launch, and we are not going to wait anymore.”
Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022 and later rebranded the company as X. Coates and other members of Operation Bluebird subsequently argued that the change meant Twitter’s former identity and intellectual property had been abandoned.
The startup later sought to secure rights to the Twitter trademarks, prompting X Corporation to sue late last year in an attempt to prevent the launch of the proposed platform.
During a hearing in April 2026, US District Court Judge Colm Connolly reportedly issued a tentative ruling indicating that X may have abandoned intellectual property rights relating to the word “tweet”, the Twitter bird logo and possibly the “Twitter” name.
However, the judge has yet to issue a formal written ruling.
Coates said the startup viewed the judge’s comments as enough justification to proceed with the launch.
“It’s our opinion that X has abandoned its rights on the Twitter and tweet trademarks,” he said.
‘TWITTER.NOW IS NOT X’
Operation Bluebird has sought to differentiate Twitter.now from Musk’s X, stating on its website that the new platform is being rebuilt around trust and is “not X” and has no connection with X Corp.
Twitter.now has already attracted hundreds of users and includes familiar features from the original Twitter, such as replies and reposts.
The platform also features an automated fact-checking system called Vera, a Gemini-based “veracity engine” designed to assess posts in real time.
Coates said the startup hopes to create a platform that promotes freedom of expression while limiting the spread of harmful or misleading information.
“Our first goal is to see if we can truly bring back a town square that’s safer and less harmful,” he said.
Josh Gerben, a Washington-based trademark lawyer who has been following the dispute, said Operation Bluebird could have a “workable legal theory” for arguing that X abandoned the Twitter trademark.
However, he cautioned that the legal dispute remains unresolved and that the launch could trigger another response from X Corporation.
“It was one thing to file the trademark application; now that they’ve launched, there will be another response from [X Corporation],” Gerben said.
He added that “they’ve really upped the ante now. It’s a really interesting escalation of the case”.