Twitter threatens to sue Meta over Threads, Semafor reports

PHOTO CAPTION: Meta Threads and Twitter app logos are seen in this illustration taken, July 6, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

(Reuters) -Twitter has threatened to sue Meta Platforms over its new Threads platform, Semafor reported on Thursday, citing a letter sent to the Facebook parent's CEO Mark Zuckerberg by Twitter's lawyer Alex Spiro.

Meta which launched Threads on Wednesday and has logged more than 30 million sign ups, looks to take on Elon Musk's Twitter by taking advantage of Instagram's billions of users.

"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," Spiro wrote in the letter.

Spiro, in his letter, accused Meta of hiring former Twitter employees who "had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other highly confidential information," the report said.

Since Musk's takeover of the social media platform, Twitter has seen competition from Mastodon and Bluesky among others. Threads' user interface, however, has a striking resemblance to the microblogging platform.

Still, Threads does not support keyword searches or direct messages.

Meta and Spiro did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

(Reporting by Tiyashi Datta and Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)