Twitter has threatened Meta with a lawsuit following the spectacular launch of Meta's new Twitter rival, Threads — probably the clearest indication yet that Twitter regards the program as a competitive threat.

On Wednesday, an attorney for Twitter filed a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg accusing the firm of stealing trade secrets by employing former Twitter employees.

PHOTO | COURTESY  Musk and Mark

The letter, sent by Alex Spiro, an outside lawyer for Twitter founder Elon Musk, accused Meta of "systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property."

Musk responded to the letter reports by tweeting, "Competition is fine, cheating is not."

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According to the letter, Meta hired former Twitter employees who "improperly retained Twitter documents and electronic devices," Meta "deliberately" involved these individuals in the development of Threads.

"Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights," Spiro added, "and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information."

PHOTO | COURTESY Mark and Musk

Andy Stone, a Meta spokeswoman, categorically ignored the letter. "No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that's just not a thing," he said on the platform.

In the months since Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter, the social network has faced competition from a rising number of smaller microblogging services, including the decentralized social network Mastodon and Bluesky, an alternative funded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. However, neither Twitter nor Facebook has threatened legal action.

Unlike some of Twitter's competitors, Threads has grown rapidly, with Zuckerberg reporting 30 million user sign-ups on the app's first day.

Threads was the number one free app on the iOS App Store as of Thursday afternoon.

According to Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, the legal threat may not necessarily result in litigation. Still, it could be part of a strategy to slow down Meta.