X can't trademark its own name. Microsoft owns it for Xbox. Meta has it registered. The USPTO rejected multiple applications.
Twitter never fought these battles, because Twitter was distinctive.
This is the cobra effect: when your solution makes the problem worse.
British officials in colonial Delhi had a snake problem. Venomous cobras everywhere. They offered bounties for dead cobras. Locals started breeding cobras for the cash. When officials killed the program, breeders released thousands of worthless snakes into the streets. The cobra population exploded beyond the original problem.
Elon Musk ran this exact experiment with a $20 billion brand.
Twitter wasn't broken. It was linguistically perfect. "Tweet" entered the Oxford Dictionary. The bluebird crossed language barriers without explanation. Brand analysts valued the equity between $4 billion and $20 billion.
More importantly, it was legally bulletproof.
X is legally naked.
Within weeks, trademark lawyers circled. Every X-related business worldwide became a potential lawsuit. The letter is functionally generic, one of the most common characters in global commerce.
What looked like bold minimalism became a legal mess.
You see this in your own work. The client wants a rebrand because the current name "feels limiting." You know the real problem is product-market fit or inconsistent messaging. But they're convinced the logo is the issue. You deliver the rebrand, and six months later, they're fighting customer confusion, lost SEO equity, and explaining the new name to everyone.
To avoid these problems in your brand strategy, validate the actual problem before prescribing solutions.
This means asking what specifically isn't working, how you measured it, and whether the proposed fix addresses the root cause or just treats symptoms. For brand strategists, this is the easiest way to protect client investments without killing momentum on bad ideas.
Three questions that kill cobras before they breed:
What problem does this rebrand solve that execution improvements can't?
If Twitter's issue was content moderation or advertiser trust, changing the name solved nothing. If your client's issue is weak positioning or inconsistent touchpoints, a new logo won't help.
What equity are we abandoning?
Twitter had dictionary-level cultural penetration. Your clients might have regional recognition, SEO authority, or customer muscle memory. Calculate what you're destroying before you build something new.
What new problems does this create?
X inherited trademark battles, user confusion, and competitor opportunities. Your rebrand might trigger customer migration, team misalignment, or market repositioning you can't afford.
When a client proposes a rebrand, map the cobra breeding conditions. List every asset the current brand owns, legal protection, market recognition, and customer shortcuts. Then list every new problem the rebrand creates transition costs, confusion periods, and competitive vulnerability.
If the new problem list is longer than the solution list, you're breeding snakes.
Smart rebrands preserve equity while enabling growth. Google became Alphabet at parent level but kept Google for consumers. Meta kept Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp intact.
They understood brands are infrastructure, not decoration.
Musk treated Twitter like unnecessary baggage. He wanted something that could encompass payments, messaging, everything.
He got a name he can't legally protect in multiple markets.
The cobra effect teaches us that aggressive solutions backfire when you haven't validated the problem. The British didn't need a bounty system, they needed actual pest control. Musk didn't need a rebrand, he needed product innovation and advertiser relationships.
Your clients don't need new logos, they need honest diagnoses.
Reply and tell me the last time a client pushed for a rebrand when the real problem was something else entirely.
— Shashank
P.S.
X Corp is still fighting trademark battles Twitter never faced while trying to convince users the bird is actually dead. Some solutions breed more problems than they solve.
The question is whether you catch it before the snakes multiply.