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Match Group, an online dating company that has services like Tinder and Match.com under its belt, has been wanting to buy Bumble for a while now. Bumble is another dating app that lets women make the first move. But Match Group is apparently going through an unconventional way. According to report from Recode, Match Group has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Bumble late Friday in U.S. District court in Waco, Texas.
Match Group is suing Bumble for infringing on two of its patents that include a design patent for Tinder’s swipe-to-connect feature, per details from the lawsuit. It’s also worth mentioning that Bumble was founded by one of Tinder’s co-founders.
Match claims that early Bumble executives Chris Gulczynksi and Sarah Mick stole “confidential information related to proposed Tinder features.” In addition, they took the idea for a feature that allows users to go back if they accidentally skipped someone while going through potential matches. Both Gulczynski and Mick previously worked at Tinder.
In a statement to Recode, a Match Group spokesperson said:
Match Group has invested significant resources and creative expertise in the development of our industry-leading suite of products. We are committed to protecting the intellectual property and proprietary data that defines our business. Accordingly, we are prepared when necessary to enforce our patents and other intellectual property rights against any operator in the dating space who infringes upon those rights.
It’s also worth mentioning that tech companies tend to file patient infringement lawsuits against each other all the time. For example, BlackBerry recently sued Facebook for patent infringement.
