Twitter has threatened Meta with a lawsuit, following the launch of Meta’s new social media platform Threads on Thursday.
On the same day that Meta’s Threads launched, Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s attorney Alex Spirro wrote a letter to Meta, accusing the company of “systematic” and “unlawful misappropriation” of trade secrets, alleging that the new social media app is a “copycat” built by “deliberately assigned” former Twitter employees.
The letter, which was first reported by Semafor explained that Meta hired former Twitter employees who “have improperly retained Twitter documents and electronic devices” and that Meta “deliberately” involved these employees in developing Threads.
Twitter therefore demanded that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information.
The letter stated strongly, that “Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property right.”
However, Meta Communications Director Andy Stone, posted on Threads that “no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee.” “That’s just not a thing,” he added.
Within months of Elon Musk ‘s acquisition of Twitter, a number of smaller microblogging platforms have emerged, like Mastodon and former Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey’s Bluesky, but none of them caught Musk’s attention until Threads spun into the scene.
Meta’s Threads went live on Apple’s App Store and Androids play store,in 100 countries on Thursday. The app got over 10 million users within the first few hours of its launch and 30 million user sign-ups in its first day.
According to CNN, some think that the lawsuit may not necessarily lead to litigation, but may be a ploy to slow Meta down. Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond explained, “Sometimes lawyers, they threaten but don’t follow through. Or they see how far they can go.”
He also thinks litigation might have some good in it as he added, “That may be the case, but I don’t know that for sure.” “There may be some value to tying it up in litigation and complicating life for Meta,” he said.
So far there have not been reports of Meta’s response to the letter, as Threads’ subscribers continue to grow.
