[At-Large] X marks the spot - a small spot

Sat Jul 29 00:08:10 UTC 2023

Not only has Elon Musk bought the X.com domain.  Others have done the same such as Nissan with Z.com (now GMO Financial), Century Link now Quantum Wireless with Q.com, Amazon with a.co, Visa with v.me or many others from mainstream corporate world presumably not driven by luck.   Yet somehow African American Elon Musk actions are the ones that end up in the spotlight after restoring accounts deleted unilaterally by overzealous Twitter staffers.

As to a trademark, courts worldwide agree that single letters are "weak" to defend.  A domain is another form of goods or services which ownership can be challenged before WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center's domain name dispute resolution services.      ICANN and IANA should just stick to the technical aspect of it all.

However, single letters are among the most popular trademarks registered in the United States. Each letter of the alphabet has, at a minimum, hundreds of trademarks. There are, for example, over 2,000 trademarks of the letter S, making it the most popular. There are 1,102 Vs, 1,100 Es, and 1,816 As. Pity the lonely Y, with only 229. ... W is solidly in the middle of the letter pack, with 1,081 trademarks https://www.fastcompany.com/3042515/wtf-inside-the-wild-weird-world-of-trademarking-the-alphabet
X seems seems to be marking a spot in a well-beaten path not only in trademarks but also in domains. 

More in https://www.midphase.com/blog/where-are-all-the-single-letter-domains/ 
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-letter_second-level_domain https://www.trademarkia.com/f-by-ferragamo-87606511

Alvaro Aguilar

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    Le vendredi 28 juillet 2023 à 15:26:29 UTC−5, Mike Arbrouet via At-Large <at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org> a écrit :  

 Perception of luck can be subjective but success in business entrepreneurship requires intelligence, hard work, determination, resilience and innovative mindset. I tend to attribute Mr Musk's success in those categories.
Luck can take one so far. It's statically unfair to invoke luck when the guy has built/led/run/invested in companies such as Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, the Boring company, OpenAI, ...Credit when credit is due.

On Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:03 PM Antony Van Couvering <avc at avc.vc> wrote:

No doubt he has the right; we shall see if he has the ability.  Perhaps he is a genius, or perhaps there is a decent statistical chance that someone from a privileged background can get lucky three times in a row, and blow it on the fourth. 

On Jul 28, 2023, at 12:06 PM, Mike Arbrouet via At-Large <at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
Sounds like someone is not a fan of Mr Musk. The way I see it: his money (of which he has plenty), his companies, and consequently his decisions.And given his successful track record, I wouldn't bet against him. 
On Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 7:03 PM Evan Leibovitch via At-Large <at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:

So apparently a certain purveyor of rockets, tunnels and electric cars is infatuated with the letter "X" to the point of destroying decades and billions of dollars in accumulated brand value in renaming Twitter. Most involved in tech are I'm sure aware of this already.

Why am I posting this to ICANN mailing lists?
To call attention to the stupidity of confusing domains with brands, something in which many domain sellers -- mainly speculative domain re-sellers -- gleefully engage.
Apparently Mr. Musk seems to believe that acquiring "X.com" from Facebook -- along with some cosmetic redesigns -- constitutes a rebranding. Let this episode be a warning to others who would use a domain as a primary branding tactic, forgetting that:

   - A great number of tech companies have trademarked uses of the letter X for web services, most notable among them the aforementioned Facebook. So this is not an issue of Musk being able to bully smaller companies;   

   - Then there's Microsoft, which has some such trademarks of its own and produces an obscure, little-known computing device known as an "XBox";   

   - Most people using Unix and Linux for their desktops have been using software known as "X" for decades (though it is being phased out ... very slowly).    
...

Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada at evanleibovitch / @el56_______________________________________________
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