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Twitter Forces Twitpic To Shut Down Over Trademark Dispute

Giuseppe Macri Tech Editor
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Twitpic — the external Twitter application that allowed users to share photos before the social platform implemented the feature natively — is closing its doors in response to a trademark dispute leveled by Twitter.

“A few weeks ago Twitter contacted our legal demanding that we abandon our trademark application or risk losing access to their API,” the company wrote in a blog post Thursday. “This came as a shock to us since Twitpic has been around since early 2008, and our trademark application has been in the USPTO since 2009.”

Twitter threatened to cut off Twitpic from the platform’s application programming interface — which is necessary in order to let users post their photos directly to Twitter — if the company successfully acquired the trademark and refused to surrender it voluntarily.

“Unfortunately we do not have the resources to fend off a large company like Twitter to maintain our mark which we believe whole heartedly is rightfully ours,” founder Noah Everett wrote in the post. “Therefore, we have decided to shut down Twitpic.”

The company says it will set up an export feature in the coming days in order to allow users to download their content before Twitpic switches off on Sept. 25. Older tweets and links containing Twitpic content will break as a result of the closure.

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Giuseppe Macri