Facebook and StudiVZ Engage in War of Words

Posted by Nick O'Neill on July 20th, 2008 4:03 PM

Over the weekend, the Financial Times reported that Facebook had “filed an intellectual property lawsuit against a German company that it has accused of running a ‘knock-off’ of the social networking website.” The suit claims that StudiVZ copied “the look, feel, features and services”. StudiVZ is one of the most popular social networks currently in Germany, Switzerland and Austria and definitely looks strikingly similar to the Facebook design.

The filing of the suit resulted in a prompt response from the StudiVZ team:

Because we have not been served with the complaint, studiVZ cannot comment in detail about the content of the claims. However, based on what Facebook has apparently told the media, the claims are without merit.

Claims made by lawyers acting on behalf of Facebook prior to Facebook’s filing of this lawsuit prompted studiVZ to file for a declaratory judgment at the District Court in Stuttgart, Germany, on Friday, July 18. The purpose of the filing is to have the responsible German court declare that the claims made by Facebook are without merit.

This is not the first company to copy Facebook’s design. In China, Facebook has much more powerful competitor: Xiaonei. Xiaonei reportedly received a whopping $430 million investment earlier this year. This looks like it could become a long, drawn out battle between the two companies. Given the worldwide copycat presence, it may not be the last suit filed by Facebook.

StudiVZ Screenshot

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 20th, 2008 at 4:03 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Facebook and StudiVZ Engage in War of Words”

Jamie Says:
July 20th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Any chance of Facebook copying them - i like the red they use

could be a excuse for them to please me and the near 1.1 million people who want colour/ themes

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=837040940... 0.497 million+

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=101664092... 0.557 Million+
Jamie Says:
July 20th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Any chance of Facebook copying them - i like the red they use

could be a excuse for them to please me and the near 1.1 million people who want colour/ themes

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8370409409&ref=ts 0.497 million+

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10166409225&ref=ts 0.557 Million+
Facebook's Ongoing Clone Battle Says:
July 28th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
[...] week Facebook announced that it was suing StudiVZ, the German based copycat for running a “knock-off” version [...]