Twitter Threatens to Sue Meta over Threads Platform

(COMBO) This combination of file pictures created on July 06, 2023 shows Elon Musk as he speaks during his visit at the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 16, 2023, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg as he speaks during the 2013 TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, California, on September 11, 2013. (Photo by Alain JOCARD and JUSTIN SULLIVAN / various sources / AFP)

Asharq Al Awsat

06:08-7 July 2023 AD ـ 19 Thul-Hijjah 1444 AH

Asharq Al Awsat

06:08-7 July 2023 AD ـ 19 Thul-Hijjah 1444 AH

Twitter Threatens to Sue Meta over Threads Platform

Twitter has threatened to sue Meta Platforms over its new Threads platform in a letter sent to the Facebook parent's CEO Mark Zuckerberg by Twitter's lawyer Alex Spiro. Meta, which launched Threads on Wednesday and has logged more than 30 million sign ups, looks to take on Elon Musk's Twitter by leveraging Instagram's billions of users.
Spiro, in his letter, accused Meta of hiring former Twitter employees who "had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other highly confidential information," News website Semafor first reported.
"Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information," Spiro wrote in the letter. A Reuters source with knowledge of the letter confirmed its contents on Thursday. Spiro did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. "No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that's just not a thing," Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a Threads post.
A former senior Twitter employee told Reuters they were not aware of any former staffers working on Threads, nor any senior personnel who landed at Meta at all. Meanwhile, Twitter owner Musk said, "Competition is fine, cheating is not," in response to a tweet citing the news.
Meta owns Instagram as well as Facebook. Since Musk's takeover of the social media platform last October, Twitter has received competition from Mastodon and Bluesky among others. Threads' user interface, however, resembles the microblogging platform.
Still, Threads does not support keyword searches or direct messages. To press a trade secret theft claim against Meta, Twitter would need much more detail than what is in the letter, said intellectual property law experts including Stanford law professor Mark Lemley.
"The mere hiring of former Twitter employees (who Twitter itself laid off or drove away) and the fact that Facebook created a somewhat similar site is unlikely to support a trade secrets claim," he said.
Jeanne Fromer, a professor at New York University, said companies alleging trade secret theft must show they made reasonable efforts to protect their corporate secrets. Cases often revolve around secure systems that were circumvented in some way. The newest challenge to Twitter follows a series of chaotic decisions that have alienated both users and advertisers, including Musk's latest move to limit the number of tweets users can read per day.

Taiwan Cultivates Young Overseas Chip Talent with Summer Camps, University Courses

Students dressed in white protective suit and a face mask visit a clean room as part of a summer camp organized by US chip designer Synopsys with the goal to attract more youth to Taiwan's semiconductor industry, in Hsinchu, Taiwan July 18, 2025. (Reuters)

09:26-4 August 2025 AD ـ 10 Safar 1447 AH

Taiwan Cultivates Young Overseas Chip Talent with Summer Camps, University Courses

Dressed in a white protective suit and face mask, Nicolas Chueh listened intently as a guide introduced a series of silver machines used in manufacturing Taiwan's cutting-edge semiconductors. The 16-year-old was among students from eight countries at the summer camp staged to raise interest in Taiwan's most vital industry amid a fast-declining birth rate that could leave tens of thousands of critical jobs vacant.

"I myself really enjoy playing video games. So I'm really just always using these semiconductor products," said Chueh, whose parents enrolled him after he expressed interest.

The camp, organized by US chip design software firm Synopsys, is among several such events staged by chip companies and Taiwanese universities in recent years as demand for semiconductors, which power most electronics and AI servers, surges across the globe.

But for the first time this year, Synopsys, which has significant operations in Taiwan to be closer to the semiconductor supply chain, hosted the events both in Mandarin and English as Taiwan searches for overseas talent.

"There is an urgent need to strengthen STEM education from an early age," said Robert Li, Synopsys's Taiwan chairman, who believes the camps can increase interest in the chip industry and help prime some of its future leaders.

"That is why we are launching this initiative in Taiwan, where its strength in semiconductors meets the challenge of demographic decline. Taken together, it is clear we must act here first."

Given limitations posed by Taiwan's ageing population, Synopsys is also considering hosting camps internationally to spur interest in chip making and designing, he added. The company charges T$33,000 ($1,103) for the English versions and T$10,900 for Mandarin.

Chueh, a dual Taiwan-Belgian national who lives in Singapore, said he views semiconductors as an attractive career choice.

"I want to lean into it to some extent because I think it will be crucial in the future with AI."

SLUMPING BIRTH RATE

Taiwan, which has a population of around 23 million, holds outsized influence over the global semiconductor supply chain, thanks to its chip companies such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, the world's largest contract chipmaker, MediaTek, and UMC.

Any decline in the industry poses an existential threat to Taiwan, which faces the threat of invasion from Beijing and draws much of its global significance from the chip behemoths.

But job openings in the semiconductor sector have risen from 19,401 in the second quarter of 2020 to 33,725 in the same period this year, according to 104 Corporation, a local human resources firm.

The industry is grappling with a shortage of both highly skilled professionals, such as IC design and semiconductor R&D engineers, and essential production staff, including operators and assembly technicians.

Filling those jobs locally is becoming harder each year as Taiwan's annual number of births has dropped from over 210,000 in 2014 to around 135,000 in 2024, according to government statistics. STEM graduates have also fallen by around 15% in that period, Ministry of Education statistics showed.

"Growth in Taiwan's semiconductor industry has been quite rapid, faster than what our schools can produce in terms of engineering talent each year," said Leuh Fang, chairman of Vanguard International Semiconductor, a Taiwan-based chipmaker affiliated with TSMC.

'THE FUTURE WORKFORCE'

Last year, the National Taiwan University launched a global undergraduate semiconductor program for foreign students, which included Mandarin courses to help them reach the proficiency needed to stay and work in Taiwan.

The program now enrolls over 40 students from more than 10 countries.

TSMC also began looking toward foreign talent by throwing its weight behind a program in Germany’s Saxony state, which would send German students to study for a semester at Taiwanese universities before interning at TSMC.

Other initiatives are attempting to create interest among children as young as 10.

Taiwan's National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) launched an outreach program in July, backed by TSMC, aimed at making chip science fun through interactive teaching tools and online games.

"The issue everyone is discussing now is where the future workforce will come from," said NYCU President Chi-Hung Lin.

"If they're curious now, they won't reject it later and some may even grow to like this kind of work."

Twitter Threatens to Sue Meta over Threads Platform

Twitter Threatens to Sue Meta over Threads Platform

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Taiwan Cultivates Young Overseas Chip Talent with Summer Camps, University Courses

Taiwan Cultivates Young Overseas Chip Talent with Summer Camps, University Courses

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