2y ago

Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over Threads | Semafor

www.semafor.com

The threat suggests that Threads is the most serious rival yet to Elon Musk’s chaotic social platform.

Technology @partizle.com

bouncing @partizle.com

2y ago

Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over Threads

www.semafor.com /article/07/06/2023/twitter-is-threatening-to-sue-meta-over-threads

Technology @lemmy.ml

Ignacio @lemmy.ml

2y ago

Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over Threads

www.semafor.com /article/07/06/2023/twitter-is-threatening-to-sue-meta-over-threads

32 comments

Remember: Musk has a bottomless money pit.
I hope to see it run out during my lifetime.
The Lawyer moshpit will begin. Money is likely to be made, but fuck me these legal cases seem tiring to even be near.
Sorry Elon, but...
I'm fairly sure you don't get to axe most of your staff, refuse (illegally) to pay their severance packages and then sue another company because they hired your now, ex-employees, on the grounds that it's stealing from your company...
- Twitter is apparently also struggling to pay for all the individual arbitration claims they forced their ex-employees to engage in rather than a class action, yet now they want to take on a lawsuit against Facebook? Do they honestly think they can come out ahead here?
- I hope he does go through with the lawsuit, it would be hilarious. I'm hoping for a ship of theseus argument.
  
  I'm hoping for a mask-off "I paid them once so I own them forever" argument.
Good, let the lawyers feast on their corpses.
Anyone else thinks it's funny that journalist always have to explain/describe what Meta is? Be it the parent company of Facebook, Whatsapp or Instagram.
- I don't think anyone but Google itself takes the name "Alphabet" seriously, either.
  
  Alphabet owns Google, Google isn't alphabet per se.
This seems like a pretty heavy lift for Twitter and while I hardly support Meta, if Twitter somehow manages to win sole ownership of the concept of microblogs it would be bad for everyone.
- So long, Mastodon. (On the plus side, so long Frank Speech, Truth Social, Gab, etc. etc. etc.)
  
  Yeah, my first reaction to this story was, why didn't they sue any of the other Twitter clones before this?
I can't believe that "240 character social media post" is somehow a trade secret. What are they expecting to tell the judge and not be laughed out of court?
- It might be possible to patent it. Look at Wizards of the Coast and all their crazy card game patents. But the only reason they were able to do that is because their patents are incredibly detailed and specific. So they could change it to 256 characters or something and be fine.
  
  IIRC Threads is 500 characters, not 240, so that wouldn't be a something they could sue over.
  However, Twitter has over 2000 patents filed, over 1400 of which are registered in the United States. They deal with malicious advertisement detection & remediation, malware, automatic management of data processing, mobile app management, interactive advertising, and electric publishing to name a few.
  I can see where Musk may have found similarities between the software somewhere in the mess of their patents.
- Your Honor, they copied my most salient lines of code.
  
  Oof, imagine Twitter lawyers bringing in screen shots of their most salient code and SCOTUS TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY. Meta argues it's silly and yet those judges establish that screenshots are the way to discuss software IP.

32 comments