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- Twitter is threatening to sue Instagram Parent Meta over its Twitter-rival app Threads.
- The new app, introduced on Wednesday, had over five million users in the first few hours and 30 million the next day.
- Twitter is accusing Meta of poaching its former employees to access trade secrets meant to accelerate its competitor.
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Twitter is threatening to take legal action against Meta over its new copycat, Twitter rival platform, Threads, claiming the company has poached former Twitter employees to create the app and violated its "intellectual property rights".
In a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg – first published by Semafor – Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro argues that Meta used Twitter’s intellectual property to bring Threads to life.
The new platform was introduced on Wednesday by Instagram’s parent company Meta. A few hours after its release, the text-based competitor app logged over five million users, proving to be the most serious threat to Twitter.
"Based on recent reports regarding your recently launched 'Threads' app, Twitter has serious concerns that Meta… has engaged in systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property," Spiro said.
In the letter exclusively sent to Semafor, Spiro told Zuckerberg to stop using Twitter trade secrets or face the music.
"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.
"Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or use of its intellectual property by Meta," he said.
Spiro, who also happens to be Elon Musk’s personal lawyer, claims that Meta poached "dozens" of former employees at Twitter to create the rival app.
READ MORE | Here is everything you need to know about the new Threads platform
He further alleged that Meta assigned those ex-employees to develop Threads using Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property to accelerate the development of Threads.
This, according to Spiro violates "state and federal law, as well as those employees’ ongoing obligations to Twitter".
In response to the allegation, Meta’s communications director Andy Stone denied there being ex-Twitter engineers in their team.
“No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing," he said in Threads post.
Threads had signed up 30 million users as of Thursday, according to Zuckerburg who posted on the app itself.
