To paraphrase a cartoon in Private Eye
Twitter, Tweet, Twitterer, Twat
Twitter said that a trademark belonging to Twittad "threatens to block" it from registering "tweet" as its own "legitimate" mark, according to the company's legal submission to a district court in San Francisco. Twittad owns the trademark "Let Your Ad Meet Tweets". It is a company that "offers online advertising services …
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Twitter is still waiting for a trademark registration for 'tweet' whilst a company built on the back of Twitter has already got theirs approved?
Now either Twitter is hopelessly amateur and didn't think to register tweet until relatively recently, or they employ some slack IP lawyers who haven't been progressing their claim very quickly.
I suppose if we work hard at it, we can genericise 'tweet' and stop Twitter getting their hands on it ever. So time to start replacing 'talk', 'phone', 'message' and 'email' with 'tweet'.