Tinder’s parent company Match Group is suing competitor Bumble, accusing the female-friendly dating app of patent infringement and stealing trade secrets.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in Texas, says Bumble is virtually identical to Tinder, the app that popularized the swipe right to like, swipe left to dislike functionality.
Bumble copied the “world-changing, card swipe-based, mutual opt-in premise” of Tinder, the lawsuit says.
The complaint also says that Bumble’s co-creators are ex-Tinder employees, and the app has rolled out two new features that were “learned of and developed confidentially while at Tinder.”
Bumble has become a fierce competitor to Tinder since it launched in 2014. Bumble’s differentiating factor is that only women can make the first move. But Match confirmed last month it plans to launch that feature in its own app.
In the complaint, Match says it “applauds Bumble’s efforts at empowering women, both in its app and offline” and “cares deeply both about its women users and about women’s issues generally.”
“This case is simply about forcing Bumble to stop competing with Match and Tinder using Match’s own inventions, patented designs, trademarks, and trade secrets,” it says.
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SOURCE: CNN, Sara Ashley O’Brien
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