INTA 2015: Twitter, fair use and a ‘socialised’ logo
The bird logo used by social media website Twitter is one of the most “socialised” trademarks in the world, according to head trademark counsel Stephen Coates.
That brings challenges, he said, while speaking today (May 4) at the International Trademark Association’s annual conference in San Diego.
“We encourage people to use the bird logo in tweets,” Coates said, adding that “as long as the bird is used with a reference to the platform, I don’t think there is a licensing issue. It’s nominative fair use.
Twitter’s guidelines say that the bird should always face to the right, and should not be rotated or changed. There should also always be at least 150% buffer space around the bird, according to Twitter.
The word ‘Tweet’ is a trademark, while last month Twitter applied to trademark ‘Tweetstorm’, which is understood to be a number of tweets posted in rapid succession by an individual user on one particular subject.
Last year, photo-sharing platform Twitpic decided to close down after Twitter opposed Twitpic’s US application to trademark its name.
The conference runs from May 2 to 6.
