Twitter threatens to sue Meta over Threads platform By Reuters

By Jody Godoy

(Reuters) -Twitter has threatened to sue Meta Platforms over its new Threads platform in a letter despatched to the Fb (NASDAQ:) dad or mum’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg by Twitter’s lawyer Alex Spiro.

Meta, which launched Threads on Wednesday and has logged greater than 30 million signal ups, seems to be to tackle Elon Musk’s Twitter by leveraging Instagram’s billions of customers.

Spiro, in his letter, accused Meta of hiring former Twitter workers who “had and proceed to have entry to Twitter’s commerce secrets and techniques and different extremely confidential data,” Information web site Semafor first reported.

“Twitter intends to strictly implement its mental property rights, and calls for that Meta take quick steps to cease utilizing any Twitter commerce secrets and techniques or different extremely confidential data,” Spiro wrote within the letter.

A Reuters supply with data of the letter confirmed its contents on Thursday. Spiro didn’t reply to a Reuters request for remark.

“Nobody on the Threads engineering crew is a former Twitter worker — that is simply not a factor,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone stated in a Threads publish.

A former senior Twitter worker informed Reuters they weren’t conscious of any former staffers engaged on Threads, nor any senior personnel who landed at Meta in any respect.

In the meantime, Twitter proprietor Musk stated, “Competitors is okay, dishonest isn’t,” in response to a tweet citing the information.

Meta owns Instagram in addition to Fb.

Since Musk’s takeover of the social media platform final October, Twitter has obtained competitors from Mastodon and Bluesky amongst others. Threads’ consumer interface, nonetheless, resembles the microblogging platform.

Nonetheless, Threads doesn’t help key phrase searches or direct messages.

To press a commerce secret theft declare in opposition to Meta, Twitter would wish way more element than what’s within the letter, stated mental property regulation consultants together with Stanford regulation professor Mark Lemley.

“The mere hiring of former Twitter workers (who Twitter itself laid off or drove away) and the truth that Fb created a considerably related website is unlikely to help a commerce secrets and techniques declare,” he stated.

Jeanne Fromer, a professor at New York College, stated firms alleging commerce secret theft should present they made cheap efforts to guard their company secrets and techniques. Circumstances typically revolve round safe methods that had been circumvented not directly.

The most recent problem to Twitter follows a collection of chaotic selections which have alienated each customers and advertisers, together with Musk’s newest transfer to restrict the variety of tweets customers can learn per day.