Elon Musk uses ex- Twitter security chief Peiter Zatko’s argument to cancel previous $ 44 billion deal.
It is evident that Elon Musk no longer wants to continue with the acquisition of Twitter or, at least, under the conditions initially raised.
The businessman’s legal team has submitted a letter to Twitter in which he insists on the cancellation of the agreement, and takes as a reference the recent statements of the complainant Peiter Zatko, former head of security of the social network.
The document , also received by the US Securities and Exchange Commission , maintains that Twitter would have breached several conditions of the merger agreement between two Elon Musk companies and the social platform, if Zatko’s accusations were true.
Musk and Twitter ‘s legal teams will face each other in court from October 17, in Delaware.
Musk summons Zatko to trial with Twitter
After Peiter “Mudge” Zatko’s explosive statements about security problems on Twitter, in which he highlighted the system’s lack of interest in establishing a real number of bots and spam accounts, Elon Musk decided to include him in a long list of court summonses that seeks to disable the agreement.
According to data from The New York Times , more than 100 subpoenas have been issued to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and former Twitter executives. In addition to Jack Dorsey, former CEO and co-founder of the trine network, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, investor David Sacks and various representatives of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Salesforce, Mastercard, among others, have been considered by the court.
lol, lawyers w/ TWTR are sending subpoenas to friends in the ecosystem around @elonmusk and @pmarca and @DavidSacks et al, a giant harassing fishing expedition.
I have nothing to do with this aside from a few snarky comments, but got a “YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED” document notice.
— Joe Lonsdale (@JTLonsdale) August 1, 2022
The citations also reach Musk’s own environment, such as Antonio Gracias – former member of the board of directors of SpaceX – and the executive Kristina Salen.
Possible patent violation on Twitter
Part of the document indicates that Twitter would have infringed an intellectual property violation regarding the machine learning systems on the platform, one of the points mentioned by Zatko in his complaint.
“As Zatko’s complaint revealed, Twitter apparently never acquired the rights to Twitter’s basic machine learning models, which the Musk Parties understand to be fundamental to the Twitter platform itself. That breach threatens not only significant monetary damages, but also the potential for injunctive relief that would threaten Twitter’s ongoing business as it is currently operated,” Musk’s legal team notes.
With this, Musk’s argument for canceling the agreement moves from just focusing on bots and spam to something more concrete: corporate omissions in security, private data and intellectual property violations. However, all of this is supported by little balance: Zatko’s performances, the same ones that have not yet been proven.