Elon Musk has reacted to the recent cease-and-desist letter sent to Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta (the parent company of Facebook), which accuses Meta of infringing upon Twitter’s intellectual property rights with the launch of Threads.
Musk, who took over Twitter in October 2022, threatened legal action against Meta over the new Threads app in a cease-and-desist letter sent to Zuckerberg by Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro.
The Threads app, dubbed the “Twitter Killer,” has received over 30 million downloads in the 18 hours since its Thursday launch, allowing users to share text and links as well as engage in conversations by replying to or reposting messages from other users.
Reacting to a report about the cease-and-desist letter on Thursday, Musk stated in a tweet that “Competition is fine, cheating is not,” and viewed Threads, Meta’s new suite of social networking applications, as an attempt to monopolise the social media space.
Meta made a strategic move when it launched Threads, a new platform with over 30 million sign-ups. Meta’s ambitious venture aims to compete with Musk’s Twitter by capitalising on Instagram’s massive user base, which has billions of active users.
Threads was the top free app on Apple’s App Store in the UK and US on Thursday, according to Reuters.
However, Musk has shared his thoughts on the recent launch of Threads. In response, he retweeted an image that drew a comparison between the Threads logo and a tapeworm, adding the comment, “Metaphorically too.”
He also expressed disappointment with Meta’s launch of the Threads app, viewing it as an attempt to monopolise the social media space.
Twitter, on the other hand, has threatened to sue Meta for “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation” of its trade secrets and intellectual property, as well as data scraping.
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,” according to attorney Spiro.
Spiro also claimed that Meta recruited former Twitter employees who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information.”
He alleged that these employees were assigned by Meta to develop the Threads app with the specific intent that they use Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property 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.
Meanwhile, in response to the accusations, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone denied the involvement of any former Twitter employees on the Threads team.
“No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.” Stone said.
THEGUARDIAN
