Social networking giant Facebook has lost a court battle in which it attempted to prove a German rival website copied its design.
Facebook accused the StudiVZ site of illegally obtaining source code needed to create the site’s graphics and designs seen on some of the its features.
“Although there are overlaps and similarities between the two sites that are impossible to overlook, no dishonest copying could be established by the judge,” the court ruled.
The court also said that the German website had nothing to gain by imitating Facebook, because Facebook was mainly used in North America during 2005, when the German website went online. A German-language version of Facebook was not offered until March 2008.
Facebook reportedly provided insufficient proof to support the allegation that source codes had been stolen, and the court also pointed out that some of its programming data is already freely available online.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COMMENTS
SmartCompany is committed to hosting lively discussions. Help us keep the conversation useful, interesting and welcoming. We aim to publish comments quickly in the interest of promoting robust conversation, but we’re a small team and we deploy filters to protect against legal risk. Occasionally your comment may be held up while it is being reviewed, but we’re working as fast as we can to keep the conversation rolling.
The SmartCompany comment section is members-only content. Please subscribe to leave a comment.
The SmartCompany comment section is members-only content. Please login to leave a comment.