Proactive Investors - Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) has threatened to file legal action against rival Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) over the latter’s similar new Threads app.
Threads, much like Twitter, is a conversational text-based app launched by Meta's billionaire owner Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday, which attracted millions of users in a matter of hours.
Though the app is undeniably similar to Twitter, Elon Musk’s company has gone one step further and accused Meta of actually basing it off stolen intellectual property.
“Twitter has serious concerns that Meta has engaged in systematic, wilful and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property,” Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro wrote in a letter to Zuckerberg.
“Over the past year, Meta has employed dozens of former Twitter employees [that] have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information,” he continued.
“With that knowledge, Meta deliberately assigned these employees to develop […] Meta’s copycat Threads app.”
Spiro argued Meta had broken federal law by using ex-Twitter workers to develop the app, with the employees also allegedly owing certain obligations to their former company.
Is this the true Twitter killer?
Musk has laid off thousands of Twitter workers in a cost-cutting drive since he bought the social media company for US$44bn last October.
With the move seemingly having come back to bite, Musk’s Twitter also formally requested that Meta preserve documents relating to hiring and onboarding of its ex-staff.
Separately, Musk tweeted: “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”