According to the Wall Street Journal, Twitter is about to get the trademark of the word Tweet by settling a suit with Twittad which currently holds the trademark to Tweet
“”On Monday, James Eliason, CEO of Twittad, said in an interview that Twitter would drop a lawsuit it filed against his company last month that sought to nix Twittad’s registered trademark of the word “tweet.” In return, Des Moines-based Twittad would transfer its registered trademark of “tweet” to Twitter, he said.'””
You can read more about the lawsuit here
As part of the settlement Twitter would restore Twittad’s account on Twitter so that it can resume business.
If Twitter gains control of the Tweet trademark then a lot of domain holders better take notice.
bad, but, inevitable, now Twitter is a ten billlion dollars web superpower
Could be a boost for .tv owners
Before launching http://www.CelebTweets.com I secured a generic that they could re-brand under should Twitter get the TM and get pushy. That said I don’t know if Twitter is going to come full force against all domain owners or websites with “Tweet” in their name. Forcing all of the companies built around similar names to rebrand or shutdown would damage their image greatly.
If it is not handled properly it will give Bill Gross and his twitter killer ambitions the ammo he needs to make a major attack against them and their market share. But not closing the deal on TweetDeck only to lose it to Twitter later was a big misstep. But maybe they didn’t close the deal because they knew eventually Twitter would get the “Tweet” TM after all.
In time we’ll see….