When it comes to enforcing their trademarks, plenty of tech companies have been quite aggressive, even to the point of being accused of overreach. eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) has an system that automatically sends threatening emails to owners of many web domains that end in -bay.com. Intel (NSDQ: INTC) went on a lawsuit spree in 2008, filing 15 trademark lawsuits against companies that seem far removed from its business: from a Southern California electrical shop (once called Intellectric), to a Santa Clara travel agency (Intellife), to a Maryland investment advisory shop (Insider Intel). Now, we’re starting to get a look at Twitter’s views on trademark enforcement.
In a blog post earlier this month, Megan Calhoun, the founder of TwitterMoms.com, (“Where Smart Moms Connect”) said she got an email from Twitter asking her to change the name of her website for trademark reasons.
Calhoun doesn’t seem to have taken offense at all, and wrote that “Twitter’s request was entirely reasonable and understandable.” In any case, “The time for change had come,” and the site will be re-branding itself to SocialMoms.com in early January.
It’s a little confusing why Twitter decided to enforce its trademark just now. After all, TwitterMoms.com spent more than two years building itself into a business around the name TwitterMoms.
Twitter declined to comment for our story, but a company spokesman told AdAge that “[t]o an average person, there could be confusion.” The spokesman didn’t say whether the company would be going after other websites with Twitter in their URL, like TwitterJobs.com or TheTwitterGuys.com.
Another open question is which, if any, of the dozens of Twitter-related services run by independent developers or companies might be getting trademark complaints from the Twitter mothership. While most of the services and app makers stick to some version of “Tweet” or “Twit-” (both of which Twitter has said they’re generally okay with), there are others that use the full name, like Twitterfall and Twitterrific.
The company’s trademark guidelines say not to register any “domains containing twitter (or misspellings of twitter.)” And while they say it’s fine to use Tweet in the name of any application designed to be used exclusively with the Twitter platform, Twitter doesn’t want anyone but it applying for a trademark with Tweet in the name.

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