Elon Musk takes control of @X account from user who had held it for 16 years

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The official account for Elon Musk’s X app has switched from @Twiter to @X without paying the previous owner for the one-letter account, according to reports.

The single-letter username had been registered to Gene X. Hwang, the co-founder of photo firm Orange Photography, for more than 16 years before Twitter’s sudden rebranding on Monday brought the account under scrutiny.

On Tuesday, Mr Hwang said that neither Mr Musk nor X had reached out to him, however by Wednesday the account was under the control of the tech billionaire’s company.

“Alls well that ends well,” Mr Hwang posted from a new account, @x12345678998765.

Neither Mr Musk nor X paid any money for the one-letter account, according to The Telegraph, though did offer some company merchandise. The Independent has reached out to X for further information.

Mr Musk has reportedly taken over other accounts without permission since he took over the platform in October 2022.

According to Platformer editor Zoe Schiffer, the world’s richest person took over the username @e shortly after acquiring the company for $44 billion, despite the original owner of the account being unwilling to part with it.

The @e account remains inactive, featuring the name ‘John Utah’ – the same as the protagonist of the 1991 film Point Break – and following just three accounts: Elon Musk, LAist and Nasa.

X has also changed its other official accounts to ditch the Twitter branding, renaming its subscription service to @XBlue, and @TwitterSupport to @Support.

The company’s Twitter signage was also removed from its San Francisco headquarters on Monday.

The website domain X.com also now redirects to Twitter.com, while all of the site’s blue bird logos have been replaced with a crowd-sourced X logo.

The hasty switch from one brand to another may result in legal difficulties for Mr Musk, according to trademark lawyers, after it was revealed that the billionaire does not own the intellectual property rights for the letter X when it relates to social networking.

Tech rivals Meta and Microsoft both own trademarks for ‘X’ in different domains, with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg currently controlling the federal trademark for a blue-and-white letter ‘X’ for “social networking services”.

“There’s a 100 per cent chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody,” one US-based IP lawyer said on Tuesday.