In a new development, it has been said that Twitter has promised to sue Meta, the company that owns Facebook, because of the release of its Threads app.
Meta released the Threads app on Thursday as part of its suite of social networking apps. It lets users have talks and arguments in threads.
The idea behind the app is similar to what Twitter is all about, where users can reply to and build on other people’s tweets.
Twitter says that the Threads app infringes on its intellectual property rights and breaks some of its rules for use. This is what causes the dispute.
In a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter’s lawyer, Alex Spira, said that Twitter is very worried that Meta Platforms (Meta) has stolen Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property in a systematic, intentional, and illegal way.
Spiro says that 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.”
“Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to stop Meta from keeping, disclosing, or using any more of its intellectual property,” Spiro said.
Spiro also says that Meta hired a lot of ex Twitter workers who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information.”
He says that Meta gave these employees the task of making the Threads app with the intention that they would use Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property to speed up the development of Meta’s competing app. This would be against both state and federal law, as well as the employees’ ongoing obligations to Twitter.