In a new episode of this dramatic express story: Twitter is threatening to take legal action against Meta just because they copied basically everything from them when they launched Threads. Twitter accused Meta of recruiting all of their former employees (who they laid off in a massive downsizing) to create a carbon copy of Twitter.
The issue is that many of them had and still have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information. Recall that just this Wednesday, Meta unveiled Threads, a sort of text-based Instagram appendage that looks (a lot) like Twitter.
According to Semafor, just hours later, a Twitter lawyer, Alex Spiro, sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, accusing the company of engaging in a “systematic, willful and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.”
Threads: What Is It, How Does It Work, and Everything You Need to Know?
“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,” Spiro wrote in a letter obtained exclusively by Semafor.
“Twitter reserves all rights, including but not limited to the right to seek civil remedies and injunctive relief without notice to prevent Meta from further retaining, disclosing or using its intellectual property.”
Meanwhile, Andy Stone, Meta’s communications director, told Semafor that Twitter’s allegations are unfounded: “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee, that’s simply not an issue.”
Not to create more conspiracies, but Twitter’s letter would be a sign that Threads is the most serious rival so far to the chaotic “little bird” company. No one should be surprised, Meta is an expert in copying what it likes: from Snapchat it copied Stories and from TikTok it copied Reels.
This story was written in Spanish by Cora Bravo in Cultura Colectiva
