Twitter Threatens to Sue Meta Over Threads

Threads is all the rage a day after it launched and saw 30 million signups. The new social media app from Meta — dubbed a “Twitter killer” — has the Internet buzzing, for good and bad reasons. it has even been a trending topic on Twitter. Elon Musk and company are looking to put an end to that, and have threatened Meta with legal action over the new app.

On Tuesday, Semafor reported Twitter’s parent company, X, sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg accusing the company of engaging in “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation” of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.

Here’s more text from the letter, which Semafor obtained:

“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.”

More from the article:

Spiro accused Meta of hiring dozens of former Twitter employees who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information.”

He also alleged that Meta assigned those employees to develop “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.”

It’s probably worth remembering this Elon Musk tweet from November:

So Twitter’s owner and CEO gleefully fired swaths of his employees and said he looked forward to them being of use elsewhere. Then a chunk of those employees went out and helped create a direct competitor to his property.

Whoops. Man, talk about your all-time backfires.

I just want to know if this makes a Musk-Zuckerberg cage match more likely or less.