Twitter threatens to sue Meta’s new Threads app over allegations of stealing trade secrets and employing former Twitter employees.
Twitter has threatened to sue Meta’s new Threads app, the potential competitor of the microblogging site. A letter was sent to CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday accusing Meta of stealing trade secrets by employing former Twitter employees, according to CNN reports.
Semafor was the first to report on the letter. However, the veracity of the letter was confirmed to CNN by a source with knowledge of the situation, ANI reported.
In a letter, Alex Spiro, an outside lawyer for Twitter owner Elon Musk, claimed that Meta had committed “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.”
“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.
“Competition is fine, cheating is not,” Elon Musk tweeted after the successful launch of the Threads application.
The new app has seen a very successful launch, as Zuckerberg has revealed that more than ten million users signed up within the first seven hours, dwarfing the launch of some other popular platforms.
Spiro also noted the company’s right to seek civil remedies or injunctive relief. He added that the letter marked a “formal notice” for Meta to preserve documents relevant for a potential dispute between the companies.
Andy Stone, Meta spokesperson, responded to the report, writing, “no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing”.
By Alka Jain for Livemint
