Elon Musk says ‘cheating is…’ after Twitter threatens to sue Meta over Threads

Twitter has threatened authorized motion towards Meta over the brand new text-based app Threads lower than 24 hours after its launch, news outlet Semafor reported. In a letter despatched to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter’s lawyer Alex Spiro has accused the corporate of utilizing the latter’s commerce secrets and techniques by ‘hiring dozens of former employees of the blue-bird app’.

Reacting to the news, Twitter proprietor Elon Musk on Friday stated that he supported competitors however not ‘cheating’. Replying to a news article about the identical on Twitter, Musk wrote, “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”

Spiro, who can be Musk’s private lawyer, has alleged within the letter that Meta had engaged in “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property” to develop Threads.

Twitter claimed that its former staff nonetheless had entry to its confidential info, which was taken benefit of to construct a “copycat” app “in violation of both state and federal law.”

“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 within the letter. He added that it’s a “formal notice” for Meta to protect paperwork related for a possible dispute between the businesses.

Andy Stone, Meta spokesperson, in a Threads submit, asserted that the engineering group at Threads doesn’t encompass any former Twitter workers.

Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, in an obvious reference to Threads, tweeted, “We’re often imitated — but the Twitter community can never be duplicated.”

The lawsuit motion is maybe the clearest signal but that Musk considers Zuckerberg’s ‘Twitter-killer’ app as an actual risk.

Threads, which goals to tackle Twitter by leveraging Instagram’s billions of customers, racked up greater than 30 million sign-ups inside about 18 hours of its Wednesday launch. It comes at a time when many are in search of Twitter options to flee Musk’s chaotic dealing with of the platform since buying it final yr for $44 billion.

(With inputs from Reuters)