Twitter spars with Mark Zuckerberg's social media clone with legal cease-and-desist notice
Twitter's letter alleges that Meta, over the past year, has intentionally hired a significant number of Twitter's employees and assigned them to develop the new 'Threads' app, imitating Twitter's platform.
In the latest twist in the saga between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, the latter's introduction of Instagram's Twitter rival, Threads, has sparked legal fireworks.
On Wednesday, Instagram, a Meta entity, unveiled Threads, a text-centric social app crafted to capitalize on Instagram's existing infrastructure and its massive user base. As per Zuckerberg's statement, the app had already registered over 30 million sign-ups by Thursday morning.
A legal document dated July 5 sent from Twitter's counsel to Zuckerberg, Meta's CEO, reveals the firm's "serious concerns" about Meta's purported "systematic, willful and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property." The letter underscores Twitter's commitment to protecting its intellectual property rights and demands Meta's immediate cessation of using any Twitter trade secrets or highly confidential information.
Twitter has sent Zuckerberg a cease and desist over his Twitter clone. Meta hired Twitter employees privy to trade secrets to develop their knockoff. pic.twitter.com/8eMGH57KQ7
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) July 6, 2023
Twitter's letter alleges that Meta, over the past year, has intentionally hired a significant number of Twitter's employees and assigned them to develop the new 'Threads' app, imitating Twitter's platform. It accuses Meta of directing these employees to utilize Twitter's trade secrets and intellectual property, an act purportedly in contravention of state and federal laws and the employees' existing obligations to Twitter.
In response, Meta's spokesperson, Andy Stone, referred to his post on Threads, refuting the claims by stating, "No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that's just not a thing."
Twitter's cease-and-desist letter further mentions that Meta is categorically forbidden from "any crawling or scraping of Twitter's followers or follower data." Despite the explicit ban, the letter doesn't allege any such activity by Meta.
Semafor was the first to report on the legal missive dispatched by Twitter's legal team to Meta. Elon Musk, who clinched the ownership of Twitter in a $44 billion deal in October 2022, has yet to make a public statement on Threads.
Twitter's recently appointed CEO, Linda Yaccarino, seemingly alluded to Threads in a tweet on Thursday, stating, "We’re often imitated — but the Twitter community can never be duplicated.”
- By Ezra Levant
I’m suing Catherine McKenna and Steven Guilbeault!
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