Elon Musk’s Twitter Threatens To Sue Mark Zuckerberg Over ‘Copycat’ Threads App

Elon Musk‘s Twitter has threatened to sue Mark Zuckerberg‘s company, Meta, over its new rival social media app, Threads.

On Thursday, July 6, 2023, Meta launched Threads, a text-based conversation app intended to rival Twitter, and the new social media platform received a largely positive reception.

Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg said Threads, which was launched in 100 countries, garnered 30m sign-ups in less than 24 hours after launching, apparently making it the most rapidly downloaded app ever.

He explained that Threads accounts are linked to Instagram profiles, making the process to sign up seamless between apps and giving the Twitter copycat a built-in user base.

Zuckerberg noted that Threads was Meta’s attempt at taking a shot to build a “public conversations app with 1bn+ people” – an opportunity that Twitter had but “hasn’t nailed”.

“This is as good of a start as we could have hoped for!” Zuckerberg said in a thread on Thursday.

Twitter Threatens To Sue Meta

In a letter to Zuckerberg, published by online news outlet Semafor on Thursday, Elon Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro accused Meta of engaging in deliberate and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.

Alex Spiro further alleged that Meta recruited numerous former Twitter employees who had access to the company’s trade secrets and highly confidential information to build a “copycat” Twitter clone.

He emphasized their intention to rigorously uphold their intellectual property rights and demanded that Meta immediately cease using any Twitter trade secrets or highly confidential information.

The Twitter lawyer said the company “has serious concerns that Meta Platforms (Meta) has engaged in systematic, willful and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property”.

“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.”

Alex Spiro claims in the cease-and-desist that Meta hired dozens of former employees in the past year, some of whom “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information” and “many” of whom have “improperly” kept Twitter documents or electronic devices.

“With that knowledge, Meta deliberately assigned these employees to develop, in a matter of months, 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,” the letter reads.

But a spokesman for Meta referred Insider to a Threads post from communications head Andy Stone, in which he wrote, “To be clear, no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.”

Stone added in a follow-up Threads comment, regarding Twitter’s suggestion that Meta was “scraping” data: “Interesting, given that Threads is powered by INSTAGRAM.”

Twitter representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment ahead of publication, but the company owner, Elon Musk expressed his stance on the matter with a simple tweet: “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”

KanyiDaily recalls that the two tech moguls, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, recently agreed to settle their differences in a highly anticipated ‘cage match’ fight.