Back to collectionEx Populus Takes the Name Dispute to Court
A naming conflict seeded two years earlier had reached the point where Ex Populus had to respond to a demand from Musk’s side that it make way for global registration of the xAI mark. Ex Populus chose to sue X.AI Corp and X.AI LLC in the U.S. The project had largely reacted to setbacks when games were delayed, its story shifted, and the chain moved into the background.
A creative chronicle combining project history with imagined scenes. Story events are not verification of network activity.
A naming conflict seeded two years earlier had reached the point where Ex Populus had to respond to a demand from Musk’s side that it make way for global registration of the xAI mark. Ex Populus operated in games under the Xai brand, while its community was still busy checking node costs, airdrops, and routine claims.
Ex Populus chose to sue X.AI Corp and X.AI LLC in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, case 3:25-cv-07101. Its seven causes of action included federal trademark infringement and unfair competition, along with a request to cancel the other side’s trademark registration; it sought a jury trial. The complaint said the XAI mark had been used in commerce since June 2023 and that Ex Populus held federal registration 7,788,241. It also said the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had suspended several applications from Musk’s side because of earlier rights. To show that it had not borrowed someone else’s name, the complaint set out the project’s record: node emissions and airdrops had generated about USD 300 million in community rewards since 2024; more than 5 million wallets worldwide had held XAI; its official gaming account had 300,000 followers and had been registered in January 2021, two and a half years before Musk’s xAI; and Ex Populus had raised USD 8.5 million for its gaming business. It also cited a Grok answer that wrongly identified the gaming account as Musk’s game studio as an example of confusion. These were the complaint’s claims and evidence; the court had yet to decide the case. Meanwhile, XAI traded at $0.053, 96.7% below the March 11, 2024 reference high. When someone in the group asked whether winning could lift the token price, the Night Watchman replied, “This case is about standing up for ourselves, not the token price.” Others counted their own losses: three nodes had cost more than USD 160, returned only USD 2 or 3 over a year, and yielded none of the dozen or so game airdrops they had expected. An official representative said keys could produce esXAI over the long term, which could be redeemed for XAI or staked in a pool for a boost; three airdrops had already gone out, with news of the rest still pending. The block explorer also moved to its new address today, as announced at the start of the month.
The project had largely reacted to setbacks when games were delayed, its story shifted, and the chain moved into the background. This time Ex Populus actively brought the brand dispute to court, so the narrator gave August 21 a page of its own. A complaint was not a judgment: trademark rights, the extent of confusion, and the next legal steps remained to be settled. For players and node holders, the lawsuit ran alongside questions about returns. Whether the brand would be protected, and when there would be news of the remaining airdrops, were unanswered.