'Threads' Rakes In Over 55 Million Subscribers In Three Days...

Barely three days after launch and with over 55 million subscribers already in the bag, newly introduced micro blog platform, Threads, appears to be running stormy waters.

This follows the decision by its rival, Twitters, to head to court over claims that the Threads’ parent body, Meta O, hired its former employees.

This allegation is contained in a letter delivered to Mark Zukerberg by Twitters’ attorney, Alex Spiro.

In the letter, Spiro accused Meta of employing Twitter’s employees who continue to have access to its trade secret and other high confidential materials.

Spiro urged Meta to take immediate steps to address the anomaly, insisting that Twitter intends to enforce its intellectual rights.

“Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights and demands that Meta takes immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secret or other highly confidential information,” Spiro’s letter said.

In a reaction to the letter, an unnamed Meta spokesperson told Reuters that Twitter’s allegation is false, pointing out that Meta is not aware of any former employees of Twitters working for Threads.

But in a veiled reaction to the emergence of Threads and allegation of trade secret violations, Twitter CEO, Elon Musk tweeted, “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”

Industry watchers are however, not convinced that Twitter has enough claims on the trade infringement allegation against Threads. They posited that mere supposition that Threads employed Twitter’s old employees, voluntarily dismissed by the later itself, cannot sustain the case. 

Intellectual property law expert, Prof Mark Lemley told Reuters that Twitter would require a lot more than what it has alleged in its letter to Zukerberg to stand any chance.

According to him, the accusation that Threads hired former employees, already voluntarily laid off by Twitter anyway, is not likely to be enough ground to support claims of trade secret violation. Neither is the fact that Thread is somewhat similar to Twitters.

“The mere hiring of former Twitter employees (who Twitter laid off or drove away) and the fact that Facebook created somewhat similar site is unlikely to supprt a trade secrets claim,” Lemley said.

Similarly, Jean Fromer, a New York University professor, pointed out that it is incumbent on companies allegging trade secret violations to demonstrate reasonable evidence of efforts made at protecting their corporate secrets, adding that such cases always revolve round breached or circumvented secure systems.