New York — With accomplishment comes’ set-back, and Facebook is facing a similar situation — initiated a long legal battle to pursue social networks that have cloned their design or features by suing German site StudiVZ.
Facebook lawyers on Friday filed a complaint in a California Federal Court, accusing StudiVz, a German social networking site which has 10 million users, of copying the look, feel, features and services of Facebook and seeks “to end StudiVZ’s illegal activity” lest Facebook’s own reputation be harmed by association.
The carbon copy in question is StudiVZ, which calls itself “the most flourishing social network in Germany, Austria and Switzerland”.
StudiVZ with 10 million active members to its credit is the largest social networking site in the German-speaking world, extensively covering Germany, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland.
StudiVZ on Sunday said it has requested a German court to declare that Facebook’s claims are baseless.
The lawsuit cropped-up several months after Facebook, which claims more than 80m active users, launched a German language version of its own website. That site has since struggled to gain traction among German users, according to one person close to the company.
The network is in fact comprised of three different sites, each one a separate social network intended at diverse segments of the market. StudiVZ.net is the classic site for college-aged students, SchuelerVZ.net is for high school students and MeinVZ.net is for older adults.
In its complaint, Facebook charged StudiVZ of duplicating entire portions of the site’s design, including features such as Facebook’s distinctive “wall,” which allows users to leave messages on each other’s profile pages.
According to Financial Times, in the complaint Facebook noted that any differences between the two sites were “nominal” and accused StudiVZ of simply “replacing Facebook’s blue color scheme with a red one”.
Facebook is a social-networking site that has able to build an user base of over 80 million users worldwide since it was launched in 2004, and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the Facebook, is among the world’s youngest billionaires.
The occurrence of this is not by chance, as Facebook has just recently settled its own intellectual property dispute over the origins and ideas behind the site. The 2004-founded Facebook was accused to have replicated from ConnectU, a Harvard university site developed at around the same time.
“As with any forged product, StudiVZ’s uncontrolled quality standards for service, features and privacy negatively impact the genuine article,” Facebook stated in the complaint.
StudiVZ filed for declaratory judgment at the District Court in Stuttgart, also on Friday.
It now rest in the hands of what StudiVZ makes of the complaint, and how it justifies the various similarities on the site. Facebook said it was “seeking to stop StudiVZ’s illegal activity to ensure that users are not confused and that Facebook’s reputation remains unharmed”.
Facebook’s suit also seeks compensatory damages in an amount to be determined at trial.
StudiVZ claims Facebook is suing them only because Facebook has failed to transplant its success in the United States and other countries to the German market.
“Their strategy appears to be: ‘If you cannot beat them, sue them,’” said Marcus Riecke, chief executive of StudiVZ, which is owned by Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, a German publishing company.
However, based on what Facebook has apparently told the media, the claims are without merit, studiVZ noted.
Earlier this year, Facebook started to launch localized versions of its website. In February Facebook launched the full version of the Web site in Spanish, followed by a German version in March. Facebook is also available in French and several other languages.