Twitpic Shutting Down on September 25 over trademark dispute with Twitter

In what could be termed as an ‘unexpected and hard’ demise of Twitpic, the Twitter-integrated photo-sharing service last week announced closure of its about six years old operations from September 25.

The decision to go offline came in the light of trademark disputes between Twitpic and the microblogging site Twitter, the company on which it relied for business.

Expressing disappointment over the development, Twitpic founder Noah Everett said that the ‘demise of Twitpic is unexpected and hard’.

Twitpic was founded in the year 2008.

“We are sad to see Twitpic is shutting down. As Twitpic has done for years, we encourage developers to build on top of the Twitter service. We had also made it clear that they could operate using the Twitpic name,” a Twitter spokesperson said, while adding, “Of course, we also have to protect our brand, and that includes trademarks tied to the brand.”

The microblogging site had earlier threatened to bar its API access to the photo-sharing service provider in case it fails to drop the application to trademark the ‘Twitpic’ name.

Meanwhile, the Twitpic founder said that they have done nothing wrong with the tradewark that uses for the company.

In the company’s blog post, Twitpic founder said:

“We originally filed for our trademark in 2009 and our first use in commerce dates back to February 2008 when we launched. We encountered several hurdles and difficulties in getting our trademark approved even though our first use in commerce predated other applications, but we worked through each challenge and in fact had just recently finished the last one.”

Meanwhile, Twitpic has announced launch of an exporting tool before final closure which will users to download their photos and videos from the service.