Elon Musk legally notifies Meta to shut down Threads and threatens to sue

The launch of Threads by Meta, a mirror image of Twitter in terms of functionalities has aggravated Elon Musk who accused Meta of "cheating" and has sent a cease and desist letter threatening to sue Meta.

According to several reports, Elon Musk has sent a legal notice to Meta over "systematic, willful and unlawful misappropriation" of Twitter's intellectual properties and trade secrets, along with scraping of Twitter's data, for the development of Threads.

The cease-and-desist letter was sent to Mark Zuckerberg by Alex Spiro, the lawyer representing Elon Musk. The reports were confirmed by Musk when he replied to a (Twitter) thread stating "Competition is fine, cheating is not".

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Mark Zuckerberg launched the Twitter rival Threads yesterday, an app built by the Instagram team. This micro-blogging site shares similar functionalities to Twitter and offers a space for real-time updates and public conversations. It is planned to be rolled out in more than 100 countries for iOS and Android, and people in those countries can download the app from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

The platform garnered 2 Mn signups in its first two hours of going live in the App Store as noted by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on his Threads account. The app has currently surpassed a user base of 30 Mn users.

The contents of the legal notice state that Twitter intends to enforce its Intellectual Property Rights and demand Threads stops using trade secrets by Twitter, as per reports.