‘Twitter threatens Meta with legal action over copycat app Threads’

Twitter has threatened legal action in a letter to Meta over the recent introduction of Threads. This new social medium may have misused Twitter’s trade secrets and intellectual property, Twitter claims.

“Over the past year, Meta has hired dozens of former Twitter employees,” Twitter’s attorney Alex Spiro wrote in the letter. These ex-employees had and continue to have ‘access to’ trade secrets and other highly confidential information, and are also alleged to have unlawfully retained documents and electronic devices from Twitter.

Because those ex-Twitter employees still have access to that information and devices, Meta was able to make the Threads platform faster, Twitter said in the letter. The company is said to have violated several American laws. The employees would also violate ‘obligations’ that they still have towards Twitter. The company is probably referring to contractual agreements that employees had with Twitter, for example about sharing trade secrets with competitors.

Twitter “intends to vigorously enforce its rights” and demands that Meta “take immediate steps” to cease using trade secrets or other confidential Twitter information. If Meta does not do this, Spiro threatens to enforce this through a judge. Due to a possible lawsuit, Spiro says in the letter that Meta may not destroy relevant documents, for example surrounding the development of Threads and the contact between Meta and former Twitter employees.

The letter came first published by Semafor. Two sources of the Financial Times confirm the contents. Threads is a social medium that revolves around sharing short text messages and, according to Spiro, is a ‘copycat app’ of Twitter. The new platform is not yet available in the European Union, due to ‘uncertainty regarding regulations’.