Legal Battle Erupts as Twitter Threatens Lawsuit Against Meta Over Threads App

Legal Battle Erupts as Twitter Threatens Lawsuit Against Meta Over Threads App

In the latest development of a brewing dispute, Twitter’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, has issued a letter to Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, warning of potential legal action against Meta’s application called Threads, which Twitter considers to be a “copycat” of its platform.

Elon Musk, Twitter’s executive chairman, took to social media to accuse Meta of “cheating” in relation to the release of Threads, a text-based social network that bears resemblance to Twitter. Musk clarified that while he welcomes competition, he will not tolerate any form of cheating. These comments from the billionaire come in response to Spiro’s letter, which threatened legal consequences.

Spiro’s letter, dated July 5, states that Twitter intends to vigorously protect its intellectual property rights and demands that Meta immediately cease using Twitter’s trade secrets. The letter claims that Meta hired former Twitter employees who had access to confidential information, including trade secrets. These employees were allegedly assigned to develop Threads, the “copycat” app, utilizing Twitter’s proprietary information and intellectual property to expedite its development.

Furthermore, Spiro’s letter serves as a formal notice to Meta to preserve any relevant documents pertaining to the dispute between Twitter and Meta, as well as any documents involving former Twitter employees now employed by Meta.

In addition, Spiro explicitly states that Meta is prohibited from engaging in any crawling or scraping activities related to Twitter’s followers or following data without prior consent from Twitter.

On July 5, Meta launched Threads, its new text-based social network, in 100 countries. This release came shortly after Twitter faced a rate limit controversy, during which the platform temporarily restricted the number of posts users could read.