Threads hasn't been alive for a day, and Twitter is already threatening to sue

AppleInsider

Twitter's attorneys are already threatening the nascent Threads with a lawsuit for stealing trade secrets and misuse of intellectual property.

The letter, sent by the Quinn Emanuel law firm, claims that Twitter has "serious concerns that Meta Platforms has engaged in systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property."

Allegedly, Meta has hired dozens of former Twitter employees, intentionally, and with the intent of using Twitter's trade secrets to make the platform. The letter, provided to Semafor on Thursday, goes on to say that the employees were deliberately assigned to this project to develop the project, using those trade secrets that they carried with them.

"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," the letter goes on to say. "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."

Meta disagrees with Twitter's interpretation of events.

"No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee -- that's just not a thing," an unnamed source said to Semafor.

Other demands the letter makes include a stop to crawling or scraping of Twitter's followers not allowed by the service. The firm is also demanding that Meta needs to immediately start preserving any documentation that might be relevant to a legal battle between Meta and Twitter including hiring data.

It's not clear what's going to happen when the dust settles. The concept of a social media feed is not able to be covered by US copyright. Facebook's efforts in social media overall pre-date Twitter's by a few years.

Employee non-compete agreements are specifically illegal in California, under Section 16600, so allegations of just that are likely to fail in court. Twitter would have to prove that there was direct misuse of non-patentable, non-copyrightable trade secrets to prevail in court.

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ravnorodom

Oh, brother. Can they just settle this whole thing in their up coming fight in Rome's Colosseum ?

williamlondon

ravnorodom said:

Oh, brother. Can they just settle this whole thing in their up coming fight in Rome's Colosseum ?

Would definitely watch that if they went old school and allowed lions in the arena along with those two dipshits.

jamescude

Oh, come on! Twitter is by far one of the least complex pieces of "tech" on the internet. Any decent developer could code up a copy in a few hours. The "secret sauce" is mainly the server power needed to keep it running. Such a desperate ploy from an owner who *finally* realizes his $44 billion dollar toy's sole value was the collective intellectual property of its users. Of which he owns precisely zip. Enjoy...

jayweiss

SOCIAL Media - I think not. More like Anti-Social Media. 

williamlondon

Revenue by litigation, Musk's most recent brain fart.

If you can't beat them, sue, how fucking original.

appleish

LOL! Squirm, Elmo, Squirm. Burn, Twitter, Burn!

jdw

I personally feel folks need to leave Musk alone.  He bought Twitter.  He can and SHOULD try things.  You win sometimes and you lose sometimes.  Not all decisions are good.  But CHANGE is better than what the old Twitter did.

I am mainly writing this post because I spotted a separate article here on AppleInsider today entitled "How to delete your Twitter account on iOS & the web."  I couldn't help but feel that was pushing the "We think Twitter is bad, and we think you should feel that way too" narrative.  And what do you know?  Comments are BANNED under that article, thereby giving credence to my suspicions.

The world has gone mad.  The very fact people spend so much time on social media is partly evidence of that.  Calm down.  Take a deep breath.  Look outside at the beautiful world instead of your mobile phone.  Think positive thoughts rather than be so critical.  There is a batter way.  Most people simply chose not to pursue it.

macxpress

The girls are fighting!!!!

williamlondon

jdw said:

[self-righteous rant with a big dose of "LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!"-tongue swish in Musk's ass]

Feel better?

edited July 2023

speedbird9

ravnorodom said:

Oh, brother. Can they just settle this whole thing in their up coming fight in Rome's Colosseum ?

How about Thunderdome?  “Two men enter, one more leaves.”  

bloggerblog

When you fire shipbuilders they'll look for shipbuilding jobs.

anilu_777

jdw said:

I personally feel folks need to leave Musk alone.  He bought Twitter.  He can and SHOULD try things.  You win sometimes and you lose sometimes.  Not all decisions are good.  But CHANGE is better than what the old Twitter did.

I am mainly writing this post because I spotted a separate article here on AppleInsider today entitled "How to delete your Twitter account on iOS & the web."  I couldn't help but feel that was pushing the "We think Twitter is bad, and we think you should feel that way too" narrative.  And what do you know?  Comments are BANNED under that article, thereby giving credence to my suspicions.

The world has gone mad.  The very fact people spend so much time on social media is partly evidence of that.  Calm down.  Take a deep breath.  Look outside at the beautiful world instead of your mobile phone.  Think positive thoughts rather than be so critical.  There is a batter way.  Most people simply chose not to pursue it.

I agree with your last paragraph but not the first two. Twitter was a shitshow before Musk and it has only gotten worse since he bought it. Having a decent “town square” where debates could happen and things could be shared very much depends on the moderators preventing said shitshow. Threads will undoubtedly become just as bad. 

mikethemartian

jdw said:

I personally feel folks need to leave Musk alone.

Why? Is he unable to defend himself? He certainly doesn’t have any problem ripping others.

alex1n

Meta and Twitter - fighting like cats in a sack…

”
There once were two cats of Kilkenny
Each one thought the other too many
So they fought and they fit and they scratched and they bit
And excepting their nails and the tips of their tails
Instead of two cats there weren’t any.
”
- Old limerick.

edited July 2023

9secondkox2

jdw said:

I personally feel folks need to leave Musk alone.  He bought Twitter.  He can and SHOULD try things.  You win sometimes and you lose sometimes.  Not all decisions are good.  But CHANGE is better than what the old Twitter did.

I am mainly writing this post because I spotted a separate article here on AppleInsider today entitled "How to delete your Twitter account on iOS & the web."  I couldn't help but feel that was pushing the "We think Twitter is bad, and we think you should feel that way too" narrative.  And what do you know?  Comments are BANNED under that article, thereby giving credence to my suspicions.

The world has gone mad.  The very fact people spend so much time on social media is partly evidence of that.  Calm down.  Take a deep breath.  Look outside at the beautiful world instead of your mobile phone.  Think positive thoughts rather than be so critical.  There is a batter way.  Most people simply chose not to pursue it.

The only sane post in this cesspool of hate. 

edited July 2023

9secondkox2

bloggerblog said:

When you fire shipbuilders they'll look for shipbuilding jobs.

Except that’s supposedly not what’s happening here. Musk is saying Meta is poaching. Totally different ball game than an ex employee scoring s job with a competitor. 

Let’s at least try to be genuine about things. 

stabitha_christie

jdw said:

I personally feel folks need to leave Musk alone.  He bought Twitter.  He can and SHOULD try things.  You win sometimes and you lose sometimes.  Not all decisions are good.  But CHANGE is better than what the old Twitter did.

I am mainly writing this post because I spotted a separate article here on AppleInsider today entitled "How to delete your Twitter account on iOS & the web."  I couldn't help but feel that was pushing the "We think Twitter is bad, and we think you should feel that way too" narrative.  And what do you know?  Comments are BANNED under that article, thereby giving credence to my suspicions.

The world has gone mad.  The very fact people spend so much time on social media is partly evidence of that.  Calm down.  Take a deep breath.  Look outside at the beautiful world instead of your mobile phone.  Think positive thoughts rather than be so critical.  There is a batter way.  Most people simply chose not to pursue it.

So, people should leave Musk alone but you get to lecture everyone else and tell them what to do.? 

The cult of Elon is really something to behold. 

mike wuerthele

jdw said:

I personally feel folks need to leave Musk alone.  He bought Twitter.  He can and SHOULD try things.  You win sometimes and you lose sometimes.  Not all decisions are good.  But CHANGE is better than what the old Twitter did.

I am mainly writing this post because I spotted a separate article here on AppleInsider today entitled "How to delete your Twitter account on iOS & the web."  I couldn't help but feel that was pushing the "We think Twitter is bad, and we think you should feel that way too" narrative.  And what do you know?  Comments are BANNED under that article, thereby giving credence to my suspicions.

The world has gone mad.  The very fact people spend so much time on social media is partly evidence of that.  Calm down.  Take a deep breath.  Look outside at the beautiful world instead of your mobile phone.  Think positive thoughts rather than be so critical.  There is a batter way.  Most people simply chose not to pursue it.

We've had comments off on tips for about five years, so you might want to rethink your premise.

The "how to delete your Twitter account" was done because it's been a frequent request. WWDC and the run-up distracted us for a bit, and we got to it today. That's all. If we had a philosophical objection to Twitter, or thought it was a waste of time, we wouldn't be using it.

edited July 2023

applebynature

jdw said:

I personally feel folks need to leave Musk alone.  

Aww boo hoo, leave the poor egomaniacal dumbass billionaire alone! ::eyes roll deep into my head::

chasm

I have to point out that the law firm in question, Quinn Emmanuel, often files lawsuits on its own rather than because they are representing a given company. They do this pretty much constantly with Apple, filing lawsuits on imagined slights or conspiracies that are usually laughed out of court, but often its just cheaper to settle -- and that's what Quinn Emmanuel is generally hoping for. That's their modus operandi.

I'm not saying that's the case here necessarily, I haven't seen the actual filing to see if QE is claiming to represent Musk or Twitter directly. What I'm saying is that this is a law firm that will go to court with no direct evidence of the veracity of the claims. For Meta to say flat-out that their main charges are provably untrue makes me think QE is back to its old tricks.