Twitter Threatens Legal Action Against Meta Over Threads
"Competition is fine, cheating is not," commented Elon Musk on the situation.
Twitter has reportedly issued a legal threat against Meta over Threads, a recently launched new social media application and a direct competitor to Elon Musk's Twitter, accusing Zuckerberg's company of "systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property".
First reported by Semafor, Twitter Lawyer Alex Spiro sent a cease-and-desist letter directly to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The letter alleges that Meta has engaged in a deliberate and organized effort to unlawfully acquire and utilize Twitter's trade secrets and other valuable intellectual property. It specifically points out Meta's hiring of multiple former Twitter employees who had access to highly confidential information, implying that these individuals were assigned by Meta to develop their own app, Threads, with the intent of leveraging Twitter's proprietary knowledge to expedite the creation of Meta's competing application.
"Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information," Spiro wrote in the letter. "Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or use of its intellectual property by Meta."
In response to the situation, Meta's Communications Director Andy Stone stated that Twitter's accusations are unfounded. "No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee – that’s just not a thing," he told Semafor.
Twitter owner Elon Musk also commented on the matter, saying that while "competition is fine, cheating is not."
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