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Akinwande Soji-Ojo
Microblogging platform, Twitter, owned by Elon Musk, has sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Meta, over the “unlawful misappropriation” of its trade secrets.
In the letter, Twitter’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, described Threads as a “copycat” and said that Meta had hired dozens of former Twitter employees who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s highly confidential information.”
Since launching the text-based app, Threads, on Thursday, more than 30 million people have signed up, with Zuckerberg announcing that the app recorded 10 million new entrants in the first seven hours.
Threads comes with features similar to that of Twitter, such as liking, reposting, and deciding who can reply to threads.
Users can also follow and connect with others who share similar interests and build a loyal following of their own to share their ideas, opinions and creativity with the world.
However, the new app, unlike Twitter, does not have an edit button or a direct message (DM) feature. It is however superior in terms of word length – 500 counts; and video length of five minutes.
According to Spiro, Twitter has serious concerns that Meta has engaged in “systematic, willful and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.”
“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,” the lawyer wrote.
Responding to Twitter’s allegation, Meta spokesperson, Andy Stone, said in a Threads post that: “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee – that’s just not a thing.
Meanwhile, Twitter owner, Musk said: “Competition is fine, cheating is not,” in response to a tweet citing the news.
Since Musk’s takeover of the social media platform in October 2022, Twitter has seen competition from Mastodon and Bluesky, among others.