Twitter has threatened to sue Meta concerning its new Threads app which is a potential competitor of the microblogging site. Less than a day after the launch, Twitter issued this legal threat against Meta, the company that released this app. According to CNN reports, a letter was sent to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, alleging that the app was developed by hiring former Twitter employees and stealing trade secrets.
What is the new Threads App about?
Threads app is an exclusive messaging app developed by Meta that allows its users to have private conversations with their close friends on Instagram. This platform was introduced to blend smoothly with the main Instagram platform. The features available in this app include status updates, a camera-centric interface, auto status, and amplified privacy settings.
It was developed to enable real-time, public conversations among its users, deploying itself as an interactive and dynamic discussion platform, with the aim of enhancing communication and promoting intimate connections between the inner circle of users in the community of Instagram.
Since its inception, the Threads App for text-based messaging had already gained over 55 million users.
What letter did Meta receive?
On July 5, a lawyer representing Twitter sent a cease-and-desist letter to Meta CEO Zuckerberg, expressing “serious concerns” regarding the alleged systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property by Musk's company.
What does the letter say?
The letter emphasized Twitter's intention to diligently protect its intellectual property rights and demanded that Meta promptly cease the use of any Twitter trade secrets or highly confidential information.
The letter further states that over the past years, Meta company has hired dozens of Twitter employees, while alleging that Meta assigned these employees intentionally to develop this Meta’s copycat ‘Threads’ app in a matter of months, with a certain intent that they would use trade secrets and other intellectual property of Twitter for developing this competing app, in breach of state and federal laws as well as those employees.
When asked for a response, the spokesperson of Meta, Andy Stone referred to his post on Threads that stated that among the engineering team of Threads, nobody is a former Twitter employee and that it is not a thing.
In a response to Twitter’s legal threat news to Meta, Elon Musk said “Competition is fine, cheating is not”.
The letter further mentioned that Meta is prohibited from engaging in any crawling or scrapping of Twitter’s followers or follower data. Also, scrapping any services of Twitter is expressly prohibited for any reason without prior consent from Twitter. Although, the letter did not claim that Meta has engaged in any such activity yet.
