Twitter vs Threads: Lawsuit Against Meta May Fail Given Background

However, it is not yet clear if a lawsuit would be filed in the coming days.

A Twitter spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Meta spokesman Andy Stone said in a post about Threads on Thursday that no one on the site’s engineering team is a former Twitter employee.

Legal experts noted that while many companies have accused competitors of stealing trade secrets after they hired some of their former employees and launched a similar product, cases are difficult to prove.

To win, a company has to show that its competitor took financially valuable information and that the company had made “reasonable efforts” to keep it secret, said Polk Wagner, a University of Pennsylvania law professor.

But the question of what constitutes a “reasonable effort” it can be delicate.

“Courts are pretty clear that you can’t just wave your hands and say something is a trade secret. On the other hand, you can’t lock everything down so much that nobody can use the information,” Wagner said.

secret designation

Meta launched Threads on Wednesday in what could be the first real threat to Twitter, which has alienated many users and advertisers since billionaire Elon Musk bought the micro-messaging site last year.

Threads bears a certain resemblance to Twitter, like many other social networks that have emerged in recent months.

One of the items that courts look at is whether a company made it clear to its employees that the specific information in question was a trade secret.