Newsletter

Newsletter TechSpot Poll

Receive weekly updates on new articles, news and contests in your mail!

Email address:

You can also subscribe to our daily feeds using:

TechSpot RSSEmailTwitter    

The web

Facebook sues ‘knock-off’ German site

By Jose Vilches, TechSpot.com
Published: July 21, 2008, 1:52 PM EST
Facebook sues ‘knock-off’ German site

Facebook is suing a German social networking site by the name of StudiVZ for allegedly copying the look, feel, features and services of Facebook in order to piggyback off their success. The lawsuit comes several months after Facebook finally launched a German language version of its website but is apparently struggling to gain traction among users in that region.

Indeed StudiVZ does look like just a red version of Facebook and early versions of the site even featured filenames such as fbook.css and poke.php, according to reports. Facebook said it was seeking to end StudiVZ’s illegal activity to ensure that their reputation remains unharmed as well as monetary compensation in an amount to be determined at trial.

StudiVZ of course says the lawsuit is not about intellectual property but about stifling competition. Interestingly, Facebook began rolling out its revamped interface today so any alleged negative impact felt from StudiVZ’s copycat design should be significantly decreased.

Related Stories

User Comments (1)

Post a comment
nirkon
on July 22, 2008
2:47 AM
I also get the feeling this is about stifling competition,
if really all its about is a few filenames and a similar design, which can be changed rather quickly.
[Edited by nirkon on 2008-07-22 02:51:55]

Browse more commented news

Post a new comment