Is Twitter itself the most-followed brand on Twitter?

According to recent Twitter Counter stats, the answer is “yes,” but … only if you add together the stats for Twitter and Twitter en español. The Top 20 Brands on Twitter list ranks YouTube at #1 and Instagram in second place, followed by Twitter and Twitter en español (@twitter_es) positioned at #3 and #4.

The Top 20 list included several news outlets, including CNN with two top rankings — CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) at #5 and CNN (@CNN) at #9. The New York Times (@nytimes) followed at #10, with BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) joining the list at #18 and NBC News Digital’s Breaking News (@BreakingNews) at #19.

Sports made several appearances on the list, including two soccer teams: FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) ranked #8 ahead of #13 Real Madrid C.F. (@realmadrid).

Take a look at the 20 Top Brands on Twitter and check out the longer list of brands ranked on the Fan Page List — does anything surprise you?

1. YouTube (@YouTube) 27,991,069 followers

2. Instagram (@instagram) 20,009,527

3. Twitter (@twitter) 19,023,515

4. Twitter en español (@twitter_es) 12,168,549

5. CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) 11,814,174

6. UberSocial (@ubersocial) 10,259,674

7. TwitPic (@twitpic) 8,968,790

8. FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) 8,960,624

9. CNN (@cnn) 8,758,585

10. The New York Times (@nytimes) 8,407,710

11. Facebook (@Facebook) 8,137,665

12. MTV (@MTV) 8,217,872

13. Real Madrid F.C. (@realmadrid) 7,745,348

14. NBA (@NBA) 7,154,172

15. ESPN (@espn) 6,522,835

16. Funny Or Die (@funnyordie) 6,166,681

17. A Googler (@google) 5,962,192

18. BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) 5,925,879

19. Breaking News (@BreakingNews) 5,729,947

20. Twitcam (@twitcam) 5,440,130

You might be a Words With Friends player, or perhaps a Chess With Friends fan, or maybe you just started playing a new game called Running With Friends. Did you know the same social gaming company, Zynga Inc., owns them all?

According to its website, Zynga has “more than 240 million monthly active users playing its games” on a number of different platforms, including Facebook, Google Android, and Google⁺, among others. Besides the games mentioned above, the company publishes several other games that incorporate the phrase “with friends” including Scramble With Friends, Hanging With Friends, Matching With Friends, Gems With Friends, and Games With Friends.

Now Zynga is demanding that dating website, CupidWithFriends, change its name, claiming that it infringes on its “with friends” family of trademarks. Zynga’s cease and desist letter (the full text is on TechCrunch) requests a name change by May 24.

CupidwithFriends was built by Apartment 7, whose co-founder, Jared Tame, told TechCrunch he has “no plans to change the name of the product.” Tame said, ”At the end of the day, we’re busy trying to innovate in the dating space and dealing with Zynga would be a major distraction to us. I think they should be more focused on innovating rather than targeting month-old startups like us.”

Here’s a copy of Zynga’s “with friends” design mark registration from the Corsearch platform:

Do you see a likelihood of confusion?

Let’s talk about Pinterest and brands.

Not surprisingly, 70% of brand engagement on Pinterest, the social scrapbooking website, is being driven by users, rather than by brands’ own Pinterest accounts, according to a new study conducted by Digitas and Curalate. Nearly 10 million pins, repins, comments, likes, and keywords were analyzed in the study, which researched more than 120 automotive, electronics, and fashion/retail brands.

Pinterest’s aim is to get its users, rather than marketers, to post imagery, so how can brands ensure they’re getting “pinned” to build brand awareness? “It’s less about what brands are doing wrong than about how they can join those conversations,” Jordan Bitterman, SVP and North America lead of the Curalate’s Social-Mobile-Local practice told AdWeek.

If you’re already using Pinterest, you’ll know that it’s similar to paper scrapbooking where users collect and organize everything from graduation photos to locks of hair. The key for brands to get airspace on Pinterest is to provide imagery that’s easy to pin. Curalate CEO and co-founder Apu Gupta told AdWeek that fashion brands in particular do well on Pinterest because they “have always understood storytelling in a way other brands haven’t.”

Pinterest’s 40 million users are mostly women. In fact, female Pinterest users outnumber men 5-to-1. If you’re interested in finding out more about Pinterest’s demographics, check out the Pinterest page called Pinterest Facts & Figures.

Many brands like Whole Foods, Birchbox, and Michaels (the craft stores) are actively using Pinterest. If you’re ready to dip your brand toe into Pinterest waters, you might want to prepare by reading Ecoconsultancy’s “11 Ways to Use Pinterest as a Brand” or AARP’s “12 Things You Should Know About Pinterest.”

How is your brand using Pinterest?

A trademark lawsuit brought by a small publishing house against Apple over the use of the term “iBooks” has been dismissed in U.S. District court. The suit, filed by J.T. Colby and Co. in June 2011, claimed ownership of the “ibooks” trademark when it purchased the assets of Byron Preiss, a company which had published more than 1,000 hardcover and paperback books under the “ibooks” name starting back in 1999.

The court failed to find a likelihood of confusion. The judge stated: “They have offered no evidence that consumers who use Apple’s iBooks software to download ebooks have come to believe that Apple has also entered the publishing business and is the publisher of all of the downloaded books, despite the fact that each book bears the imprint of its actual publisher.” You can read the full court documents here.

We’ve launched a new service to help you accurately file your valuable trademarks in the new Trademark Clearinghouse. Now you can save time, avoid errors, and simplify the filing process with our new Trademark Clearinghouse Filing Service.

This robust filing service allows you to enter, review, submit, and manage your trademarks in the Clearinghouse via the Corsearch.com platform and incorporates advanced time-saving tools that are attuned to the workflow of trademark professionals. Check out the benefits:

• Time-saving: Just enter a registration number and your relevant trademark will be automatically populated directly from the Corsearch databases of official PTO registration information.
• Accurate: Built-in error checking ensures that all required fields are populated before submission. If you don’t have all of the necessary documents, you can save the order information you’ve entered for later.
• Simple: Adocument upload feature allows you to easily upload and attach the required supporting documentation including the Proof of Use declaration and sample.
• Intelligent: A complete list of acceptable domain names is programmatically generated, which allows you to choose variations that you’d also like to apply for.
• Convenient: You can easily manage all filings, for yourself or for your clients, through the Corsearch.com platform and check the status of each registration as it moves through the validation process.
• Informative: Email and platform alerts for any trademark Claims Notifications that are received, as well as dates for upcoming Sunrise Periods, keep you well-informed.

You can learn more about the Corsearch Trademark Clearinghouse Filing Service by visiting the company website or completing this form. If you’re already a Corsearch customer, log in here and click on the “Domain Services” tab to get started.

Remember when Facebook revamped its profile pages and started using the word “timeline”? That might seem a lifetime ago, but it was 2011. That’s when Timelines, Inc., owner of a website that creates mostly historical timelines, sued Facebook fearing that users would think that Timelines.com was somehow associated with Facebook.

Timelines, Inc.’s website says it’s “the first web site that enables people like you to collaboratively record, discover and share history. It’s history recorded by the people, for the people.” The company owns registered trademarks for “Timelines” and “Timelines.com,” along with a “Timelines” design mark.

Now it’s been reported that the two-year trademark battle between Facebook and Timelines, Inc. has ended in a settlement. Facebook revealed the existence of the agreement in its 10-Q quarterly report, noting that the cost of the settlement “was not material to our business, financial condition, or results of operations.” The company is now free to continue to use the term “timeline.”

And, in other Facebook-related trademark news, a California court ruled in Facebook’s favor in its case against several “typosquatters.” Typosquatters buy domain names that resemble another website’s name in hopes that people will misspell a word and accidentally end up visiting their website, à la “dacebook” or “gacebook.” This isn’t the first time Facebook has gone after typosquatters, but it is the first time the court awarded liability damages. Facebook was awarded about $2.8 million in damages and more than 100 domains were turned over to the social networking company. You can read the full court ruling here.

What’s the most unusual typosquatter domain you’ve run into?

We’re looking forward to seeing many of our trademark colleagues at the International Trademark Association’s Annual Meeting in Dallas, which starts tomorrow.

If you’re planning to be there, please drop by to visit us at Booth 609 to see the latest trademark solutions or reserve a spot for one of our complimentary Corsearch training sessions being held throughout the conference. Seating is limited, so sign up now!

You might remember our post about the lookalike Apple Store in China – the one with the very familiar-looking stainless steel décor and spiral staircase? Well, now thanks to Laughing Squid, we’ve read about yet another fake Apple store … in Myanmar. Only this time, the store is identified with a sign that says “A ple Sto e.”

Photo from RocketNews24:

You can see all of RocketNews24 writer GO’s pictures of the Myanmar store here. There were actually several signs at the store: one had “apple store” written in all lower case letters, another said “A ple Sto e,” and yet another said “iTAB.” What were they selling? Inside GO found a lot of outdated Mac hardware, along with Steve Jobs’ autobiography.

When asked whether this was an official Apple store, the staffer’s response was: “This is a store that carries Apple products.”

What lookalike stores have you encountered on your travels?

Let’s travel back to 2010, T+B’s first year, when we wrote about Edge Games, Inc. owner Tim Langdell and his claims to the word “Edge” in several video games — including The Edge, Cutting Edge, Gamer’s Edge, and more. At that time, Langdell unsuccessfully went after Electronic Arts to try and stop the company’s use of the name “Mirror’s Edge 2.”

Over the years, Langdell also filed trademark infringement lawsuits against Mobigame, Namco, Sony, Future Publishing, and Marvel Entertainment. Now, three years and multiple trademark disputes later, the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) has cancelled Langdell’s five “Edge” trademarks. You can check out the TTAB docs here.

In one of the trademark disputes, Mobigame was forced to remove its iOS game, Edge, from the App Store for three weeks in 2010. After the TTAB cancellation, Mobigame’s David Papazian wrote on Twotribes.com: “It took us two years to create Edge from scratch, then we waited four additional years for this day to happen.”

Langdell has now filed a letter of protest, in which he calls the cancellation notice “defective.” Stay tuned …

Every April 26^th — the day on which the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Convention came into force in 1970 — is World Intellectual Property Day. Designated as a day to promote discussion about the role of IP, this year’s theme is Creativity: The Next Generation to celebrate the contributions “made by innovators and creators across the globe.”

You can get involved in or follow World IP Day events and activities in a number of different ways:

*Here’s a list of suggested activities.

*Follow the World IP Day Facebook page.

*View a map of planned activities taking place around the world.

Join us and other IP professionals around the world who will be celebrating the ever-fascinating and complex world of intellectual property tomorrow, April 26.