While many are talking and writing about AOL Inc.’s purchase of TechCrunch for a reported $40 million dollars, another tech story was published today, which displays another young tech company’s growth in a short amount of time.
MySpace, a service that once rivaled Facebook in capturing the attention of young people (it was not always a destination for just music aficionados), has now been surpassed by Twitter when it comes to online traffic. This is a big milestone for the Twitter bird, as it approaches 100 million monthly visitors.
As Twitter continues to grow, the company will want to secure the trademark on as much Twitter-related things as it can.
Up next: it’s “bird in flight” logo. The company has already applied for trademarks on the words “tweet” and “twitter”. Now it wants to make sure that no one infringes or dilutes its Twitter Bird.
While we have not heard of many fights between Twitter and 3rd parties who use the Twitter Bird in or with their products, if Twitter is granted the trademark, it will open up others to potential trademark infringement and dilution violations.
With infringement, Twitter may claim that third party usage causes consumer confusion, leading the consumer to believe the product was made by or is endorsed by Twitter.
With dilution, Twitter might claim that a 3rd party’s usage of the Twitter Bird diminishes the value of the of the mark.