Twitter owner Elon Musk has threatened Facebook’s parent company Meta with a lawsuit over its new Threads platform. In a letter from the website Semafor, Musk lawyer Alex Spiro wrote to Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg that Meta had “unlawfully misappropriated trade secrets and other intellectual property” from Twitter.
Meta hired numerous former Twitter employees who still had access to Twitter’s “trade secrets and other highly confidential information.”
These employees – Musk had laid off thousands during the acquisition – were targeted to create a copycat app within months to compete with Twitter. Spiro is threatening that Musk’s company reserves all rights to protect his intellectual property, including legal remedies.
Twitter competitor Threads was activated in some 100 countries on Wednesday evening – but not yet in the EU. According to Zuckerberg, the app was downloaded 30 million times within hours. The launch in Europe has been delayed due to pending approval from Brussels.
Threads is Twitter’s biggest challenger to date and bears close resemblance to the short message service. A number of potential competitors have positioned themselves, especially since Tesla billionaire Musk’s acquisition of Twitter last year. So far, however, none have been able to establish themselves as a real alternative.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
