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)
(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)
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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)
(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)

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.



Nvidia Ramps up AI Tech for Games, Robots and Autos

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang holds a new Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card as he gives a keynote address at CES 2025, an annual consumer electronics trade show, in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, January 6, 2025. (Reuters)
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang holds a new Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card as he gives a keynote address at CES 2025, an annual consumer electronics trade show, in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, January 6, 2025. (Reuters)
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Nvidia Ramps up AI Tech for Games, Robots and Autos

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang holds a new Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card as he gives a keynote address at CES 2025, an annual consumer electronics trade show, in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, January 6, 2025. (Reuters)
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang holds a new Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card as he gives a keynote address at CES 2025, an annual consumer electronics trade show, in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, January 6, 2025. (Reuters)

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang made a rock star appearance at a packed arena late Monday, touting AI chips and software for robots, cars, video games and more.

After years of being on the sidelines at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, talk of computer chips was a hot ticket as people queued for hours to fill an arena to hear Huang talk AI.

"When you see application after application that is AI driven, at the core of it is that machine learning has changed how computing will be done," Jensen said during a one-man presentation on stage.

"There are so many things you can't do without AI."

Jensen's keynote came on the eve of the opening of the CES show floor, and on a day that Nvidia shares closed at a new record, giving the Silicon Valley company a market valuation of more than $3.6 trillion.

Nvidia's graphics unit processors (GPUs) for powering AI in datacenters have been snapped up by Google, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI and others racing to be leaders in the technology.

During a lengthy presentation in Michelob Ultra Arena at Mandalay Bay resort, Huang introduced a GPU for ramping up AI capabilities in personal computers where Nvidia won the loyalty of gamers in the company's early days.

Nvidia touted the new GeForce RTX 50 series for desktop and laptop computers based on Blackwell chip architecture as its most advanced consumer GPUs.

"Blackwell, the engine of AI, has arrived for PC gamers, developers and creatives," Huang said.

PCs enhanced with RTX chips for AI capabilities will be available from an array of manufacturers including Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Razer and Samsung, according to Nvidia.

An AI PC displayed during the presentation was priced at $1,299, built with the $549 RTX chip at the starting point of the new GPU line-up.

Along with rapid rendering of rich gameplay action, Nvidia AI technology will enable the creation of characters that perceive, plan and act like human players, according to Nvidia.

Such autonomous characters are being integrated into games including "PUBG: Battlegrounds", according to Nvidia.

Huang also introduced a family foundation models open to the world for advancing "physical AI" that enables robots to understand and engage in real-world tasks.

Nvidia expanded partnerships and technology for autonomous capabilities in cars as well, with Toyota joining its roster of partners.