Last Update: July 08, 2023, 02:33 AM IST
United States of America, USA)
The Threads app, billed as a text version of Meta’s photo-sharing platform Instagram, became available to users in more than 100 countries on Wednesday night, including the US, UK, Australia, Canada and Japan. (AP Photo)
Twitter accuses Meta platform of stealing trade secrets for threads, but faces legal hurdles in potential lawsuit
Twitter’s claim that Meta Platforms stole trade secrets to build its new microblogging site may be a first. Legal battle between social media giantsBut experts say if Twitter does sue, it will have to cross a huge hurdle. In a letter sent on Wednesday, Twitter alleged that Meta used its trade secrets to develop its new social media platform, Threads, and demanded that it stop using the information.
Twitter said that Meta had hired dozens of former Twitter employees, many of whom “improperly possessed” company equipment and documents, and that Meta had “knowingly” forced them to work on threads. was appointed. It was not clear whether a lawsuit would be filed.
A Twitter spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Meta spokesman Andy Stone said in Thursday’s thread post that there are no former Twitter employees on the site’s engineering team. Legal experts said that although many companies have accused competitors who hired former employees and had a similar product of stealing trade secrets, the cases are difficult to prove.
To win, a company needs to show that its opponent obtained information that is economically valuable and that the company made “reasonable efforts” to keep it secret, said Polk Wagner, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Are.
But the question of what constitutes “reasonable effort” can be trickier, he said. “The courts have been very clear that you can’t just wave your hand and say that something is a trade secret. On the other hand, you can’t make everything so closed that no one can use the information,” Wagner said. .
designating a ‘secret’
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 microblogging site last year.
Threads bears some resemblance to Twitter, as do many other social media sites that have appeared over the past several months. One element that courts look at is whether a company made it clear to employees that the specific information at issue was a trade secret.
Sharon Sandin, a professor at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, said companies have lost trade-secret cases when they claimed that employees were bound by broad agreements keeping all company information confidential.
He said the courts have said that employees have no way of knowing from such broad language what is confidential and what is not. Experts say companies often bring trade-secret cases only to find that their claims aren’t as strong as they thought.
Sandin pointed to the high-profile legal battle between Alphabet’s Waymo self-driving vehicle unit and ride-share company Uber Technologies. The matter began with the allegation of theft of thousands of documents and ended with a dispute over a small handful, he said.
Uber settled the case on the eve of the trial for $245 million worth of its own shares. Although trials are rare in trade-secret cases, settlement is common, Wagner said. “The incentives to compromise are especially strong in these types of cases because no one wants secrets to be discussed more than necessary,” he said.
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – reuters,
