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Twitter may consider legal action due to Meta’s fast-growing app, Threads. Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro wrote to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday, charging Meta of “systematic, wilful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property” in order to establish Threads, as originally reported by the news source Semafor.
More specifically, Mr. Spiro said that Meta had hired a large number of ex-Twitter workers who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information” and who ultimately assisted Meta in creating what he called the “copycat” Threads programme.
Twitter demands that Meta take immediate action to stop exploiting any Twitter confidential data or other highly private information and states that it will vigorously enforce its intellectual property rights.
Twitter declares that it “reserves all rights, including but not limited to the right to seek injunctive relief as well as civil remedies at any time.”
According to Meta executives, Threads, which was introduced to millions of people on July 5th, is a “friendly” alternative to Twitter.
“No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee – that’s just not a thing,” wrote Meta spokesperson Andy Stone in a thread.
Elon Musk of Twitter claimed that “competition is fine, cheating is not,” but Meta refuted this accusation in a legal letter, denying that any ex-Twitter employees were involved in the creation of Threads.
Over 30 million users have reportedly downloaded the new app, claims Meta.
As reported by Statista, that is less than a tenth of Twitter’s projected 350 million users.
According to a 2013 SEC filing, Twitter needed four years to reach the same amount of users that Threads did in a single day, even though Twitter had to start from scratch and Threads was able to draw from Instagram’s two billion monthly users already in place.
Although US copyright law does not protect ideas, Twitter would need to show that its own intellectual property, such as programming code, was stolen in order to prevail in court.
In 2012, Meta received a patent for “communicating a newsfeed”—the technology that powers Facebook’s algorithm for displaying the most recent posts.
Both Mr. Musk and Mr. Zuckerberg have recognised their rivalry over Threads, a connected but independent programme that integrates with Instagram.
Zuckerberg broke his Twitter silence after more than 11 years to share a viral meme of two virtually identical Spider-Man figurines pointing at each other in a standoff as it launched in 100 countries.
It wasn’t long before Elon Musk said: “It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram.” This was while the word “Threads” was trending globally on his site.
Although the platform is “often imitated,” according to Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, it “can never be duplicated.”
Both Meta and Twitter have made big employee reductions this year; Meta said in April that it will eliminate about 10,000 jobs.
Following Mr. Musk’s takeover in October, Twitter laid off as many as 80% of the company’s 7,500 employees in waves of layoffs.
