Operation Bluebird, a Virginia-based startup led by Stephen Coates, a former intellectual property attorney at the old Twitter, launched Twitter.now on August 27, 2026. The company says X Corp. abandoned the Twitter and Tweet trademarks after Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022 and rebranded it as X, and it has filed for trademark cancellation with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. X sued Operation Bluebird for trademark infringement in late 2025 and sought a preliminary injunction (court order temporarily blocking an action) in Delaware federal court. At an April 2026 hearing, Judge Colm Connolly said from the bench that X appeared to have abandoned claims to intellectual property rights in Tweet, the Twitter bird logo and possibly Twitter, although no formal written order has been issued. Twitter.now currently has users in the hundreds and resembles the old Twitter, with reply and retweet functions. Its Vera tool, built on Google's Gemini generative AI, is designed as a real-time automated fact-checking system for posts. Founding membership costs $20, while $40 or more grants Fighter status; the company says the fees help fund its legal fight against X. Coates says the platform will promote freedom of speech but not freedom of reach, seeking to avoid financial dependence on harmful or inaccurate viral content. The litigation will determine whether Twitter.now can legally use the Twitter name and bird logo.