‘Competition is fine, cheating is not’: Elon Musk after Threads launch
In a recent tweet, Elon Musk has broken his silence on Meta's Twitter competitor Threads after the news of his lawyers sending a cease and desist letter to Mark Zuckerberg started spreading online. The new app has seen a very successful launch, as Zuckerberg has revealed that more than ten million users signed up within the first seven hours, dwarfing the launch of some other popular platforms. Earlier Thursday, news portal Semafor reported that Twitter has threatened legal action against Meta Platforms over its new, text-based app called Threads, citing a letter sent to Facebook parent's CEO Mark Zuckerberg by Twitter's lawyer Alex Spiro.
Alex Spiro, the attorney representing Twitter, accused Meta of unlawfully using Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property by hiring former Twitter employees to create a "copycat" app, reported AP. "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," Spiro wrote in the letter. In the letter Spiro noted the company's right to seek civil remedies or injunctive relief.
He added that the letter marked a "formal notice" for Meta to preserve documents relevant for a potential dispute between the companies. Andy Stone, Meta spokesperson, responded to the report, writing, "no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that's just not a thing". Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino has also not publicly commented on Wednesday's letter, but seemingly appeared to address Threads' launch in a Thursday tweet.
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