Twitter is taking legal action over Threads, accusing Meta of poaching former employees to create a "copycat" app, Semafor reports.
Instagram parent Meta has launched Threads, a text-based social platform similar to Twitter and other platforms. Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro wrote a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg accusing the company of "systematically, willfully, and unlawfully misappropriating Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property."
Spiro accused Meta of hiring dozens of former Twitter employees who "had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other highly confidential information."
He also claims that Meta assigned the employees to develop "Meta's knockoff 'Threads' app for the specific purpose of exploiting Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property to accelerate the development of Meta's competing app, in violation of state and federal law and the employees' ongoing obligations to Twitter."
In response, Meta's communications director Andy Stone said Twitter's accusations were groundless and that no one on the Threads project team was a former Twitter employee.