Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, has sent a letter through Twitter’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, threatening to sue Meta over its new platform, Threads. Considered by many as a substitute for Twitter, Threads has gained significant traction since its launch on Wednesday, with over 30 million signups already.
In the letter, Spiro accused Meta of hiring former Twitter employees who had access to “Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information,” as reported by news website Semafor. Spiro demanded that Meta immediately cease using any Twitter trade secrets or confidential information, emphasizing Twitter’s intent to enforce its intellectual property rights.
A source familiar with the letter confirmed its contents, but Spiro did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment. However, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone denied the claims, stating that no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee.
A former senior Twitter employee stated that they were unaware of any former staffers working on Threads or joining Meta. Despite Musk’s ownership of Twitter, he responded to the news by stating, “Competition is fine, cheating is not,” in a tweet.
Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, aims to challenge Twitter by leveraging Instagram’s vast user base. However, Threads’ user interface resembles that of Twitter, despite lacking features such as keyword searches and direct messages.
Intellectual property law experts, including Stanford law professor Mark Lemley, pointed out that Twitter would need more substantial evidence to press a trade secret theft claim against Meta. Simply hiring former Twitter employees and creating a similar platform may not be sufficient grounds for such a claim.
The emergence of Threads as a competitor to Twitter comes amid a series of controversial decisions made by Twitter, resulting in the alienation of users and advertisers. Elon Musk’s recent move to limit the number of tweets users can read per day further adds to the challenges faced by the social media platform.
