I'm surprised that everyone has focused on the moral issue instead of the legal or technical and that no one suggested the obvious (which is what I would always do anyway) of simply contacting whomever was currently using the name and ask if they'd be willing to sign it over to me.

I should have more clearly written the original post to emphasize that contacting the service provider (like Twitter) would be a last resort and that it wasn't what I intended to do with regards to any specific trademark. Like I said, I was hoping for some technical/legal background or experiences if anyone had them.

With respect to my company name being a poor choice, well that's not up for debate unfortunately. I like it and have been using it for over 10 years - not likely to stop using it. It isn't a phrase itself, but is inspired by a phrase - like so many other things. And I've been a Steve McQueen fan for over 30 years and a Happy Mondays fan for over 20.

WRT to Twitter specifically, Jamie seems like a super nice guy and after contacting him he offered to let me have the tm username. I'm trying to think of any way I might be able to use some drum samples in a future project which I can contract him to produce.