Twitter lawyers claim Meta built Threads with illegal trade secrets and former Twitter staff

Elon Musk's lawyer Alex Spiro has sent a letter to Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg, threatening to sue Meta over its recently launched text-based app Threads.

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The letter was obtained by Semafor and revealed that Twitter has "serious concerns" that Meta has engaged in "systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property" and that the company built Threads with the help of former Twitter staff.

The letter claims that Meta has hired dozens of former Twitter employees, which would have been easy considering Musk fired more than half of Twitter's staff (approximately 3,800 employees), and that these former Twitter staff had access to Twitter's trade secrets, confidential information, and still have ongoing obligations with Twitter. Twitter claims that Meta assigned these former Twitter staff to the development of Threads, which significantly fast-tracked the app's release.

• Read more: Leaked letter to Mark Zuckerberg reveals Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over Threads

Furthermore, Twitter demands that Meta take the necessary steps to stop using any "Twitter trade secret or highly confidential information".

Full Letter

Dear Mr. Zuckerberg:

I write on behalf of X Corp., as successor in interest to Twitter, Inc. ("Twitter"). Based on recent reports regarding your recently launched "Threads" app, Twitter has serious concerns that Meta Platforms ("Meta") has engaged in systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property.

Over the past year, Meta has hired dozens of former Twitter employees. Twitter knows that these employees previously worked at Twitter; that these employees had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other highly confidential information; that these employees owe ongoing obligations to Twitter; and that many of these employees have improperly retained Twitter documents and electronic devices.

With that knowledge, Meta deliberately assigned these employees to develop, in a matter of months, Meta's copycat "Threads" app with the specific intent that they use Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property in order to accelerate the development of Meta's competing app, in violation of both state and federal law as well as those employees ' ongoing obligations to Twitter.

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 to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or use of its intellectual property by Meta.

Further, Meta is expressly prohibited from engaging in any crawling or scraping of Twitter's followers or following data. As set forth in Twitter's Terms of Service, crawling any Twitter services - including, but not limited to, any Twitter websites, SMS, APIs, email notifications, applications, buttons, widgets, ads, and commerce services - is permissible only "if done in accordance with the provisions of the robots.txt file" available at https://twitter.com/robots.txt.

The robots.txt file specifically disallows crawling of Twitter's followers or following data. Scraping any Twitter services is expressly prohibited for any reason without Twitter's prior consent. Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies or injunctive relief without further notice.

Please consider this letter a formal notice that Meta must preserve any documents that could be relevant to a dispute between Twitter, Meta, and/or former Twitter employees who now work for Meta. That includes, but is not limited to, all documents related to the recruitment, hiring, and onboarding of these former Twitter employees, the development of Meta's competing Threads app, and any communications between these former Twitter employees and any agent, representative, or employee or Meta.

Very truly yours,

Alex Spiro

cc Elon Musk

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