July 19, 2008 5:22 PM PDT
Facebook sues German rival
Social-networking giant Facebook has filed a copyright infringement suit against a German counterpart, according to the Financial Times.
StudiVZ is accused of "copying the look, feel, features and services" of Facebook, including its "wall" feature, according to the complaint filed Friday in California, the Financial Times reported.
The suit asserts that the sites are so similar that StudiVZ simply replaced Facebook's "blue color scheme with a red one."
According to StudiVZ's site, the Berlin-based company has 10 million users. The site was purchased last year by German publisher Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck.
Facebook launched its own German language version in March.
CNET News could not immediately reach StudiVZ for comment.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1558275/Facebook-founder-in-court-over-%27stolen-idea%27.html
Smells like irony.
Who do they think they are accusing someone else of copying "their" idea.
I don't think studiVZ will have much to stand on, they really have copied the look and feel of Facebook. If you look at the other pages, they've copied other features of Facebook almost exactly too. Facebook is NOT suing them because they've created another similar social networking site, Facebook's suing them because their site looks almost exactly the same.
Additionally, why not include a picture from studiVZ's site? You could have at least put up a picture from the tour page, given people some context...
I don't think studiVZ will have much to stand on, they really have copied the look and feel of Facebook. If you look at the other pages, they've copied other features of Facebook almost exactly too. Facebook is NOT suing them because they've created another similar social networking site, Facebook's suing them because their site looks almost exactly the same.
Additionally, why not include a picture from studiVZ's site? You could have at least put up a picture from the tour page, given people some context...