An attorney for Twitter has accused Meta of misusing the company’s “trade secrets and other intellectual property” to create its Threads app, a rival to Twitter that the company says has drawn millions of sign-ups, Semafor reported Thursday.
In a letter dated Wednesday and published Thursday by Semafor, Twitter attorney Alex Spiro accuses Zuckerberg and his company of hiring dozens of former Twitter employees to create Threads “with the specific intent” of using their insider information to develop the app.
Spiro said many of the Meta-hired former employees “continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets” and have “improperly retained Twitter documents and electronic devices.” The letter demanded Meta immediately stop using any “Twitter trade secrets” and said Meta is “expressly prohibited” from scraping any of Twitter’s followers or following data.”
Spiro did not say whether the social media company will take legal action, but said “Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice.”
Andy Stone, communications director at Meta, posted that “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.”
