Twitter to Take Legal Action Against Meta Over Alleged Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights

According to a letter sent by Twitter’s lawyer Alex Spiro to Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Meta, US-based publication Semafor reported on Thursday that Twitter is considering legal action against Meta over its recently launched Threads platform.

Meta’s recently launched Threads app garnered 30 million users on its debut day, according to Zuckerberg. The app is being pitched as a “friendly” competitor to Twitter, which Elon Musk bought last year.

“Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights and requires Meta to take immediate action to stop using Twitter’s trade secrets or other highly confidential information,” Spiro wrote in the letter.

Twitter threat of trade secrets

In the letter, Spiro accused Meta of hiring former Twitter employees “who had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information,” the report said.

Since Musk took over the social media platform, Twitter has competed with the likes of Mastodon and Bluesky. However, Threads’ interface bears a striking resemblance to the microblogging platform.

The app, which is billed as a text-based version of Meta’s photo-sharing platform Instagram, became available to users in more than 100 countries on Wednesday night – including the US, UK, Australia, Canada and Japan.

Threads, which Meta says offers “a new, dedicated space for live updates and public discussions.” However, the new app has also raised privacy concerns and is not particularly available in the European Union.

CEO of Twitter Swipe in Threads

On Friday, Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino criticized Meta’s newly launched competitor, saying the microblogging community “can never be replicated.”

Yaccarino, who was nominated by Elon Musk to succeed him, emphasized Twitter’s role as a witness to historical events, getting real-time information, sharing opinions and fostering community.

“Whether you’re here to watch history unfold, find REAL-TIME information from all over the world, share your opinions, or learn from others, you can be real on Twitter. YOU built the Twitter community,” he said.

“And it’s priceless. This is your public square. We get imitated a lot — but the Twitter community can never be copied,” Yaccarino concluded.

(with contributions from the agency)