Twitter threatens to sue Meta over Threads: report
Posted July 6, 2023 4:56 pm.
Twitter is threatening to sue Meta, with the app’s legal team accusing the social media giant of “systemic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.”
The letter penned by Twitter’s lawyer Alex Spiro, first shared by news outlet Semafor, says Meta hired Twitter employees with the express knowledge that the employees “continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information.”
Spiro says they have obligations to Twitter, adding they have “highly confidential information” improperly retained documents and electronic devices from Twitter.
“With that knowledge, Meta deliberately assigned these employees to develop, in a matter of months, Meta’s copycat ‘Threads’ app with the specific intent that they use Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property in order to accelerate the development of Meta’s competing app, in violation of both state and federal law as well as those employees ongoing obligations to Twitter,” his letter reads.
“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.”
He also says Meta is “expressly prohibited from engaging in any crawling or scraping of Twitter’s followers or following data” and asks it to take steps to “stop using Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information” per the app’s terms of service (TOS).
There is no evidence in the letter or examples of employees using trade secrets to help build Threads.
Read More: What is Threads? All your questions about Meta’s new Twitter rival, answered
On Threads, Meta communications director Andy Stone says, “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.”
Musk hasn’t directly tweeted about the possibility of legal action, but he has replied to several snarky takes on the Threads launch. The Twitter owner responded to one tweet suggesting that Meta’s app was built largely through the use of the copy and paste function, with a laughing emoji.
He also replied to a report of legal action, saying, “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”
Competition is fine, cheating is not
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2023
Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino has also not publicly commented on Wednesday’s letter, but seemingly appeared to address Threads’ launch in a Thursday tweet.
“We’re often imitated — but the Twitter community can never be duplicated,” Yaccarino wrote.
Since launching Threads Wednesday night, Meta’s new app has collected tens of millions of sign-ups.
The app, created by the company’s Instagram team, arrives when many are looking for Twitter alternatives to escape Musk’s raucous platform oversight since acquiring it last year for US$44 billion.
WATCH: Will Threads be the death of Twitter?
Still, some analysts say Meta’s new app could be a significant headache for Twitter — pointing to the excitement surrounding Threads’ launch and impressive download numbers so far.
Success for the app isn’t guaranteed, of course. Industry watchers point to Meta’s track record of starting standalone apps that were later shut down, for example, and note that Threads is still in its early days — so time will tell.
Meta’s new app has also raised data privacy concerns. While Threads launched in more than 100 countries Wednesday, it is notably unavailable in the European Union, which has strict data privacy rules.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the Threads app says 30 million people had signed up before noon on Thursday.
