Former President Donald Trump is no stranger to legal troubles with past history of battles and current ones with the FBI and the White House. Trump’s SPAC deal to bring Trump Media & Technology Group with Digital World Acquisition Corp (NASDAQ:DWAC) has also faced challenges and could now have a major one around the name of its key product.
What Happened: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has refused a trademark application for the term “Truth Social.”
The news was reported by trademark attorney Josh Gerben of Gerben Law on Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) Thursday.
The USPTO refused to accept the trademark citing pre-existing trademarks that are similar in nature.
The filing from the USPTO cited existing trademarks for The Truth Network and Vero True Social. The filing also cited examples from Cisco Systems Inc (NASDAQ:CSCO), Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) and Salesforce.com Inc (NYSE:CRM)-owned Slack over uses of certain marks.
“Marks are compared in their entireties for similarities in appearance, sound, connotation, and commercial impression,” the filing reads.
Trump now has six months to file a response and make a case against the refusal by the USPTO for the trademark on Truth Social.
Related Link: Donald Trump Is The Favorite To Win The 2024 Election If You Listen To Canadian Betting Markets
What’s Next: Along with facing trouble over the name of its social media platform, Truth Social could be facing some financial trouble. Reports from Fox Business Network and Charles Gasparino claimed Truth Social partner RightForge said it stopped making payments for web-hosting services months ago and is $1.6 million behind. Spokespersons for both RightForge and Truth Social would not deny the claims to Fox Business.
RightForge was named as the company to offer web hosting for Truth Social in October with a platform that is “safe from censorship” and “built for free speech and a free press.”
Truth Social saw app downloads spike after the raid of Mar-a-Lago by the FBI, Benzinga recently reported. The app went from outside the top 50 most downloaded social networking apps on the Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS app store to being the 15th most downloaded, peaking at the 10th most downloaded several days later.
Trump Media & Technology Group is under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and by a federal grand jury ahead of its potential merger with Digital World Acquisition Corporation.
Digital World Acquisition faces an important shareholder vote to extend the merger deadline to Sept. 8, 2023. A shareholder meeting to vote on the extension is tentatively scheduled for Sept. 6, 2023. The original deadline set for the deal based on the SPAC IPO is Sept. 8, 2022.
Without the one-year extension, the company has the ability to extend the deadline to March 8, 2023. Failure to close the deal by the March deadline would result in liquidation.
“Digital World will be required to dissolve and liquidate its Trust Account by returning the then remaining funds in such account to the public stockholders,” according to a public filing.
Digital World also recently delayed its earnings report.
Truth Social is currently only available on Apple devices with pre-orders recently opened for Android devices.
Truth Social is one of the few social media platforms where Trump and several prominent conservative voices are welcomed after being banned from other platforms such as Twitter and Meta Platforms-owned Facebook. Trump could be welcomed back to Twitter if Elon Musk acquires the company, but faces a ban on Facebook until at least January 2023.
DWAC Price Action: Digital World Acquisition shares were down 2.42% to $29.42 on Thursday at market close versus a 52-week trading range of $9.84 to $175.
Photo: Shutterstock
