Is Facebook going after StudiVZ purely because of the similarity of the two sites as its lawsuit claims? Or is there more to the legal situation than first meets the eye?

Social networking sites all look pretty much the same, and all offer pretty much the same functions and features. But there is a line that can’t be crossed – when one social network copies another quite blatantly, something that Facebook has accused German site StudiVZ of doing. Facebook launched a lawsuit in July against the site for this very reason, but there are still some twists to come in the tale.

StudiVZ is a German social networking site that currently boasts around 10 million users. Facebook may be the market leader, along with MySpace, around the world, but in Germany, StudiVZ is king. The site is very similar looking and acting to Facebook, but whether that constitutes an intellectual property claim is not yet clear.

Indeed, Facebook itself has been on the receiving end of a similar lawsuit, after the makers of ConnectU claimed Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had stolen the idea and used it as his own. StudiVZ is the first so-called clone site to come under fire, but depending on the result, it’s unlikely t be the last.

After Facebook launched its lawsuit last month, StudiVZ asked a German judge to dismiss Facebook’s case by ruling that it had taken no intellectual property from Facebook. Both cases are still pending, and are likely to continue for months.

It has also emerged today that Facebook tried to purchase StudiVZ last year, but was turned down after the Holtzbrinck Gruppe, which owns StudiVZ asked for substantially more than the $134 million it bought the site for in January, 2007.

The International Herald Tribune reports that former StudiVZ executives claim the two companies met several times last year in an effort to secure a deal. This may be the real reason for the sudden escalation of the legal situation, as Facebook clearly wants a piece of the German social networking market that StudiVZ is currently doing so well in.

The result of this lawsuit could affect a multitude of social networking sites all around the world, a lot of which share many similarities with Facebook. This should be an interesting one to watch.

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Entry was posted on Friday, August 8th, 2008 at 6:51 pm under Internet, Legal, Opinion.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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