Twitter, led by Elon Musk, has reportedly threatened legal action against Meta, the parent company of Instagram, over allegations of trade secret theft and poaching of former Twitter employees to develop Instagram Threads, a new platform. In a letter from Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, it was claimed that Meta had engaged in the "systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation" of Twitter's trade secrets and intellectual property, as reported by Semafor.
The letter demanded that Meta immediately cease using any Twitter trade secrets or highly confidential information and warned of Twitter's intention to enforce its intellectual property rights. It stated that Twitter reserved all rights, including seeking civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice, to prevent Meta from retaining, disclosing, or using its intellectual property.
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Spiro further accused Meta of hiring numerous former Twitter employees who had access to Twitter's trade secrets and other confidential information. Meta's communications director, Andy Stone, dismissed Twitter's allegations as baseless. Stone stated that none of the engineers on the Threads team were former Twitter employees, refuting the claim made by Spiro.
Elon Musk, commenting on the matter in a tweet, expressed that competition is acceptable but cheating is not.
With Instagram Threads rapidly attracting a significant user base, Twitter is asserting its rights and demanding the end of any alleged misuse of its trade secrets by Meta.
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Meanwhile, in less than 24 hours since its debut, Threads has witnessed an astonishing surge, surpassing 95 million posts and attracting over 50 million profiles, as per the exclusive internal data obtained by The Verge.
Threads, developed by Meta's Instagram team, was introduced to iOS and Android users in 100 countries on Wednesday, instantly soaring to the top of the App Store's free app rankings
Inputs from IANS
