The first shot in a legal confrontation between the two social media behemoths may be Twitter’s allegation that Meta Platforms stole trade secrets to create its new microblogging platform, but analysts say Twitter would face a difficult obstacle if it decided to file a lawsuit.

Twitter asked that Meta stop utilising its trade secrets in a letter sent on Wednesday, alleging that Meta had exploited them to create its new social media network, Threads. Twitter claimed that Meta employed a large number of former workers of the firm, many of whom “improperly retained” company equipment and documents, and claimed that Meta “deliberately” put these individuals to work on Threads.

It wasn’t apparent if a lawsuit will be brought.

An inquiry for comment was not immediately answered by a Twitter spokeswoman. No one on the engineering team at Meta is a current or past employee of Twitter, according to spokesperson Andy Stone in a Threads post on Thursday.

Despite the fact that many businesses have accused rivals who have a comparable product and hired former employees of stealing trade secrets, legal experts say the claims are challenging to establish.

According to Polk Wagner, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, a corporation must demonstrate that its rival used knowledge that was commercially valuable and that the company made “reasonable efforts” to keep secret in order to prevail.

However, it can be difficult to define what a “reasonable effort” is, according to him.

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

In what might be the first serious challenge to Twitter since billionaire Elon Musk acquired the microblogging service last year, Meta debuted Threads on Wednesday.

Like the many other social media platforms that have emerged in recent months, Threads and Twitter have certain similarities.

Courts take into consideration a number of factors, including whether an employer informed staff that the particular material in question was a trade secret.

Companies have lost trade-secret cases when they asserted that employees were obligated by broad agreements designating all of the company’s information as confidential, according to Sharon Sandeen, a professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota.

According to court rulings, employees have no way of understanding what is and is not confidential from such broad phrasing, she claimed.

According to experts, businesses frequently launch trade-secret cases only to discover that their claims are not as strong as they believed.

Sandeen cited the well-known legal dispute between Uber Technologies and Alphabet’s Waymo self-driving car division. She claimed that although there were claims that thousands of documents had been taken, only a tiny number of them were actually in dispute.

On the eve of trial, Uber reached a settlement for $245 million in its own shares.

Wagner noted that settlements are typical in trade-secret disputes whereas trials are uncommon.

“The incentives to settle in these sorts of cases are especially strong because nobody wants the secrets being discussed more than necessary,” he said.

(Adapted from ThePrint.in)

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