Threads, the app launched by Meta to rival Twitter, has encountered legal challenges shortly after its debut. Despite amassing over 30 million users since its launch on Thursday, the app has been threatened with a lawsuit by its competitor, Twitter, alleging that Threads infringes on Twitter’s intellectual property rights.

Alex Spiro, lawyer for Elon Musk, penned a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg accusing the company of unlawfully appropriating Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property. The contents of the letter were first disclosed by the news outlet Semafor.

The letter claims that Meta has hired numerous former Twitter employees who possess and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and highly confidential information. “Twitter is determined to vigorously protect its intellectual property rights and demands that Meta promptly cease using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information,” wrote Alex Spiro in the letter.

Elon Musk, responding to a tweet referencing the news, stated, “Competition is acceptable, but cheating is not.”

In response to the accusations, Meta countered that none of the engineering team members at Threads were former Twitter employees. “None of the Threads engineering team members have previously worked for Twitter—it’s simply not the case,” clarified Meta spokesperson Andy Stone in a Threads post.

Threads represents the most significant challenge to Twitter, which is owned by Elon Musk, and despite its struggles, the platform has not yet been displaced by any of its emerging competitors.

Threads allows users to share text and links, as well as engage with and repost other users’ messages—a functionality similar to that of Twitter.

Meta’s ownership of Instagram and Facebook has been marked by a history of successful product replication from emerging internet competitors. For instance, the Reels feature was a direct imitation of TikTok’s popular video app, while the Stories feature mimicked Snapchat’s disappearing posts following its rise in popularity.

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