StudiVZ, the Facebook clone (and by clone, we mean exact duplicate) in Germany, says in an email that they still havn’t received the lawsuit complaint filed by Facebook on Friday. The lawsuit claims intellectual property infringement and accuses StudiVZ of running a “knock-off” of Facebook.
StudiVZ says they “cannot comment in detail” about the lawsuit since they haven’t seen it yet. But that isn’t stopping them from talking smack about Facebook in general. StudiVZ says they’ve filed for a declaratory judgment in the District Court in Stuttgart, Germany to “to have the responsible German court declare that the claims made by Facebook are without merit,” whatever they may be.
Marcus Riecke, the CEO of StudiVZ, goes on to call Facebook arrogant and says they are trying to create an international monopoly over social networking:
Now that Facebook, despite trying hard, has not been successful in the German market, the company seeks to obstruct studiVZ through court action. Their strategy appears to be: If you can’t beat them, sue them. There are numerous social networks. Facebook was not the first and certainly isn’t the only one. By attempting to harm studiVZ through a meritless California lawsuit, Facebook is arrogantly laying claim to an international monopoly over social networking sites that the facts show it does not deserve.
These comments would be credible if StudiVZ wasn’t such a direct ripoff of Facebook’s look and feel (see screen shot). Early versions of the StudiVZ site reportedly “borrowed” Facebook’s CSS files as well.
Perhaps StudiVZ could save themselves the legal bills and just hire a designer to come up with a unique profile and interface instead of posturing and filing counter suits in Germany.
No one hears the cries of a major publishing conglomerate.
Silliness I say. $20-$30 an hour for designers to build a new front end would seem the more logical action than $200-$400 for lawyers.
Lol, what a Facebook-biased news post! See your own article (http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/14/web-2-in-germany-copy-paste-innovation-or-more/). You say “let the battle begin”. Obviously Facebook lost the battle in Germany and now they are looking for other ways to get in control. If StudiVZ copied everything from Facebook, why are they kicking Facebooks butts in Germany? Because red is cooler than blue? Give me a break, Facebook-Fanbois.
I’m not sure we can call the game yet on Facebook vs StudiVZ in Germany. Didn’t they just launch their German version a few months ago? It would be pretty early to say in a few months that Facebook lost, or we would have to say that Facebook is pretty impatient to have said themselves the game is already over and now is time to go lawsuit.
Obviously, you know nothing about the German web market (and reading TechCrunch won’t help with that. The student and the high-school versions of StudiVZ are already the #1 and #2 most visited sites in Germany (since sometime last year).
Given the network effects, how is Facebook going to win this? Ever?
These things should be lesson for any start-up in sunny California: The world outside of the US is much larger than your own market (think China, India, …). If you don’t move to major other markets quickly, you will not have a chance in them. Back in Web 1.0 eBay had the same problem in Germany as Facebook now. eBay tried to compete with Alando, lost and finally had to buy Alando for a lot of money.
StudiVZ has been around since 2005. It seems Zuckerberg met with them in 2006, and the above mentioned TechCrunch article discussed the plagiarism in 2007. As with patents and trademarks, if you wait that long for legal action AND know about the situation, you deserve to loose the case. Apart from the fact that a Californian court can hardly rule on German market situations.
Is it illegal to copy the look of another site?
I am sure, facebook has no patent on the design of its website…
If facebook can sue StudiVZ, then I see every other website filing charges against every other site…
What about wordpress blogs that look like each other?
It is illegal according to copyright law but as has been stated a few times, the look and feel doesn’t seem to me to be the reason for StudiVZ being able to capitalise in this market, more the different strategy that they have adopted. In which case the value of the aesthetics are next to nothing and I find it hard to see how Facebook can gain any substantial payout in this instance. If news of this goes maninstream then I can see it having a hugely adverse effect on Facebook’s existing German user base or ambitions therein.
Waste of time IMO.
Interesting to me is the role of the Samwer brothers - they built studivz, sold it to Holtzbrinck and are now stake - holders in Facebook … and they know about the things going on for sure …
I suspect this lawsuit is just the opening for the takeover of StudiVZ; they are very strong in GSA (Germany / Switzerland / Austria) and it would Facebook take a very long time to gain a huge market share …
MySpace and Chris DeWolfe tried to shut down SiteSpaces.net almost 4 years ago. It’s still open today. The fact that former CEO Brad Greenspan openly admitted to copying friendster.com on his freemyspace.com didn’t help them.
All I did was redesign the skin. Most of these website’s engines are skinnable anyhow. As Arrington says in his last sentence, they should simply reskin the website with new CSS and a new skin.
Facebook doesn’t own the US patent on Social networking, Friendster does.
TL - http://offur.com/BetterThanTechCrunch
I actually have a StudiVZ account due in part by some Germans colleagues I worked with in Paris. As soon as I logged in I knew instantly that it was a Facebook ‘clone’ (when Facebook had an old design circa 2006) and it still feels like this now despite trying to differentiate itself with ‘other features’ basically translating Facebook features into German and dressing it up differently. The reaction from my colleagues when i menationed that it was a crap copy and paste job of FB was like quoting blasphamy to them and I am not suprised StudiVz has reacted in such a way as mentioned in the article.
Why bother copying Facebook? If you want to compete then differentiate yourself, create your OWN product, establish your OWN niche and build up from there and when the competition hots up (ie FB entering the German market) then you become innovative. This certainly won’t happen by copying.
Why bother copying Facebook? To make money of course! Differentiate yourself? Establish your own niche? They did that by localizing for the German market. It’s a competitive marketplace in a capitalist world. Idealism gets you nowhere. Facebook is the one who should innovate since they’re the one playing catch-up.
yea i agree with you
im from Austria myself, but im not only passively watching the development myself, im actually actively encouraging those of my friends who only have a studivz account to create a facebook account
as soon as they realize that at least half of their friends is on facebook already and studivz is just a cheap german shit version of fb theyll probably quit their studivz accounts sooner or later anyway
@Stephen: Last time i checked, its illegal to copy the look of another site, especially when it has been copyrighted, trademarked, and could result in confusion between the brands.
Regarding their claim of facebook trying to create a social network monopoly, good luck trying to sell that one. As long as MySpace and the likes exist, there will never be one.
funny thing , studivz filed many other german smaller social networksites with lawsuits in germany. i saw it on tv some month ago. and now they have their own lawsuit.
I’m surprised that there’s no outrage over Mark Zuckerberg’s rampant Facebook trolling on the StudyVZ site.
According to the screenshot above (and Google translator) Mark is a member of the groups “StudiVZ is an inexpensive reflection of Facebook” and “Facebook is much great than studiverzeichnis.” Them is fightin’ words, I say.
Danny
snuzu.com
The best policy is to win with code, not with legal might. Legal might turns people against you really fast. Aggressive lawyers are still seen negatively, and you are more likely to lose money from the negative feelings you create towards your product than to your competitor.
Just the fact that they did this could be interpreted as the Facebook developers not being up to the task of competing globally. It could be interpreted as weakness, which could lower their valuation in the eye of the public and jeopardize their future. I will not report on Facebook as I have a conflict of interest with them.
TL - http://offur.com/BetterThanTechCrunch
It’s going to be difficult for Facebook to win with code when their entire business is based on what is basically a glorified BBS. Sites like this demonstrate just how trivial it is to replicate their technology.
And someone asked why don’t they just hire someone to reskin their site: I suspect they are rather enjoying the publicity this suit is attracting. The adage “any publicity is good publicity” applies strongly here.
True, but at the same time with this lawsuit all the short comings of studiVZ are also being layed wide open to its users, that then might actually switch to facebook.
I thought Facebook is open source. This doesn’t include the look and feel? Is Facebook saying that they are open source and not open source?
@Facebook is open source
Facebook’s “application platform” is open source, not the facebook application itself.
Seriously, if Facebook’s success was hugely in part of their wonderful site design and layout, then go ahead and sue all you want…. come on facebook, I’m sure you can do better than this. And yes, StudiVz is correct to say Facebook’s lawsuit claiming intellectual property infringement is totally groundless unless they’ve patented their look and feel ..
I own many social networking profiles such as one with facebook or one with studivz.
Indeed, studivz is an exact clone of FB from earlier days (2006 or 2007). At least from an end user perspective.
There were only 2 differences in 2006/2007: a different language and a different color.
Studivz was as successful as facebook is, but they seemed to develope two completely different strategies:
Faceboot is very open. Studivz isn’t. You can’t even add a youtube video…
Studivz missed probably the most important step: There are no apps with studivz, a big differentiator.
Therefore, to me, studivz is not a complete clone anymore.
I see my friends that have registered with studivz in the past 12-18 months to now register with facebook. Studivz is becoming boring they say…
There is absolutely no need for a lawsuit! Time will tell anyways.
Facebook should better concentrate on being innovative rather than playing big, corporate evil.
The tech crowd here in Germany is laughing their a***s off about StudiVZ getting sued. They all hope StudiVZ is going under. StudiVZ has sued many websites for using “VZ” in their names. Also, the founders of StudiVZ have done some very stupid things in the past - the words PR desaster comes to mind.
Can only agree, from Day 1 I could only laugh at the site and I am actually shocked it took Facebook so long to take action.
i agree, too
studivz is pathetic
Ask yourself one question, this will be the most important 2 questions of the case against StudiVz.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008.....ous-users/
Would those German kids from 2005-2008 which made the StudiVz website generate money have signed up to the English Facebook had they not been confused by StudiVz?
Were they in fact confused at all?
That, in my opinion, would decide the case.
And the answer is: (almost) nobody would have used an English Facebook.
There are no mass market websites in Germany with an English UI.
While any German student can understand English reasonably (if it’s not too colloquial), English is not the language students use in their spare time. So, why would they use Facebook, which until 2 months ago was only available in English, when they had *any* alternative in German — or even if they had none?
While StudiVZ *is* a facebook 1.0 rip off with different colours, I am not sure it is wise of Facebook to go this route. In the end, even if StudiVZ would close down now and open up another application totally different from Facebook, the users would move towards the new app. And not FB.
Part of the reason? Because StudiVZ will be able to play the “look, they sued us and want to take away your daily toy!” card.
Suing somebody if you are not gaining traktion is one thing (The german market is fully in the hand of schülervz / studivz and Xing), being smart in how to enter the market would be a better one.
Even if StudiVZ would be brought down immediately, there are many other sites willing to pick up the users. :))
Nicole, please don’t put “if” and “would” in one sentence. Makes my hair fall out.
We all know the German blogger scene lacks grammar AND content quality, but do we really need to put that out to the world on Techcrunch ?
Thanks - Berlitz offers great courses, might also help to read a book or a decent newspaper / magazine. Try the Economist - might also give you some background for your “journalism” work.
Germans are coming! Somebody stop them before they get too comfortable
The only real issue is them ripping off the css….then heck…tons of sites do that.
Wasnt that site launched by the german hotshot entreprenuers who also sold the jambio ringtone service lol (sry if i didnt get the ringtone name right.
oh oh its jamster lol
You mean Jamba maybe? No, not the same guys.
They didn´t found it, but they were investors. They found Alando and sold it to ebay and later they founded Jamba\Jamster and sold it, too. Now they are Facebook investors … what a career …
I might be a bit biased having lived in the States and studying IT in general, but as a German I am sensing a growing affinity for Facebook in Germany.
For one, Facebook has the German lingo set up now which makes it easier (even though Germany as a whole has a wide acceptance of ESL).
Furthermore, the snowball effect is starting now - I mainly kept in touch with my US friends from Facebook but in recent times, more and more of my German friends migrated over (and that’s all demographics, not just young and bright IT students).
Additionally, it has to be said that StudiVZ is becoming less and less useful for the following reason (longer story):
At the end of 2007, StudiVZ announced a change in their policy regarding the use of personal data for advertising purposes (more here, but in German: http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt.....86,00.html). They played it down and said they would just like more personalized ads, but lawyers went into all kinds of interpretations, saying the new policy might allow them to sell data and what not.
The StudiVZ web site then showed a little bit of information to each user logging in asking them to accept or deny (leading to exclusion from the network) within a short time frame.
This had two main consequences:
* Many users left
* Many accepted but removed personal data and changed their name (e.g. “Karl Maier” => “Otto Friesehansbaum”)
All of this renders the platform largely unusable as you are unable to find people anymore. It’s especially irritating as I get messages from strange people who, after reading the message, I can guess who they are, but not always.
Funnily enough, a bunch of people told me they quit their StudiVZ account due to worries about privacy, then opened a Facebook account and added 20 applications. It’s debatable if that’s less harmful to their privacy.
in the end, lawsuits occur for two reasons:
1.) because you want the money
2.) because you feel threatened
Now they obviousuly don’t care about the money, because StudiVZ doesn’t have much and facebook has half a billion. So they must feel threatened. But all they’re doing is drawing attention to StudiVZ, and now a whole lot of people who have never heard of them are suddenly drawn to the site.
I agree, this is one wrong move for facebook, they won’t win, and it will just give more notoriety to their opponent.
Springer Verlag, another large German publisher, tried to buy StudiVZ from Holtzbrinck (the large German publisher that owns StudiVZ now) in December 2008 for 120 Million EUR, i.e. USD 180M.
Compared to *your* valuation of Facebook USD 180M should be significant. Compared to other Facebook valuations (USD 3.5B, USD 15B) it’s not. Then again, StudiVZ does not have an inflated Silicon Valley-style price.
Do they apps like facebook?
do they have the police app?
> do they have the police app?
On SudiVZ it’s called the Gestapo app
hahahaha
nice one
Maybe its true that Facebook did not make it as they would have wished in Germany, but ever since seeing studiVZ I could only think about Facebook. It is a 100% ripoff and the founders got 100 Mio Euros for it. Come on, it should not be that easy!
who gives a shit!!
As a German living in the US I am embarrassed to see StudiVZ and many Germans acting up like that. It’s 100% a clone and Holtzbrinck, the Samwers and everybody else know that. Especially that German Facebook numbers look very promising.
Interestingly also is that Holtzbrinck is trying to counter sue in Stuttgart, which is the location of the Holtzbrinck headquater and the court down there is as “biased” as it gets if it comes to local interests.
Anyhow it will be very interesting to see how this turns out. The samwers could play a lead role (they have internal StudiVZ knowledge) and Holtzbrinck has a lot of stakes in the US to loose (Scientific American…).
But whatever…great linkbait post. As usual when Michael writes about Europe.
To add to the above:
StudiVZ is based in Berlin, but the counter suit is filed in Stuttgart. You can imagine why
Oh well..glad I don’t have to deal with this shxt anymore. The German publisher scene is anyways as corrupt as it gets. Holtzbrinck is like the politically influenced WAZ Group, which employs 20000+ people, but doesn’t have a press center
> StudiVZ is based in Berlin, but the counter suit is filed in Stuttgart.
Since you claim to know German publishers, you should know that Holtzbrinck’s head office is in Stuttgart.
WTF? This coming from a career plagiarizer? f’kerberg was himself sued for ripping off an idea that was launched by someone else at Harvard. As I understand it, he was hired part-time on the Harvard soc-net team and before then knew this weasel had not only ripped off the idea but had launched a rival webservice. The law suit by the original Harvard team vs assbook dragged on for atleast a couple of years or longer and then he “settled” recently (which implies that he was guilty). What a spineless f’kface for him to turn around now and sue another soc-net company for merely introducing a similar look and feel. Look and feel can’t be defended, patentable or not, and so the more money the company burns the sooner we can expect the demise of assbook. If people were suing based on look and feel infringements, every company with a UI on it’s software or webservice would be suing each other. In the physical world, all the Japanese & Korean imports would need to be sued for introducing clones of German and American car designs. That clearly hasn’t happened, because it’s simply not enforceable.
hmmm, perhaps somebody should go ripoff face book in Iran. Last I checked there were no diplimatic relations, meaning no copyright or trademark infringment to worry about.
diplimatic is moron for diplomatic btw
Studivz changes look. Facebook and Studivz both claim victory.
The end.
If Facebook can prove they copied their code, then they do have grounds for a lawsuit unless they had permission to do so.
As far as copyright infringement over the design, there must be significant changes to avoid infringement. Blue to red is not exactly significant, particularly in view of the code issues.
Messy and stupid lawsuit? Yes. But also justified.
Our site http://www.leapways.com is aiming at startup jobs. This is a completely free service. Apart from simple job posting, we have end-to-end hiring solutions. For more info contact us at info@leapways.com.
All blogs using wordpress look alike in structure and look and feel. Does that mean i can sue Techcrunch because it has the same structure as my blog? (even i use green)
I’m still finishing Mein Kampf. I’ll post a reply once I”m finished. So far I’m leaning toward the west.
Wow. Adapting feature ideas from other sites to stay competitive is one thing but an exact knock-off including even ‘borrowing’ the css files goes several steps too far. FB is right to go after them and Michael is even more right by ‘advicing’ them to save the legal money and invest it in a designer and some creativity of their own instead. Anything else is jist plain silly.
I bet you if they pick a gentler color Facebook would have let them have it. The orange theme, combined with the exact replica of the pages is just asking for trouble.
I think facebook should just let go instead of wasting money and time. http://blabtech.blogspot.com
I am a member of both StudiVZ and Facebook and it is NOT a 1:1 copy.
It may look like it on the first look (not really) but it was already different in function 2006. StudiVZ never had features like networks, totally different approach to visibility of profiles, no applications etc.
You will not find a social network in future which has no photo section, no wall etc. Should facebook now sue all of them?
This is because in 2006 Facebook already began changing their approach to networks, profile visibility, applications, etc to move beyond the version that StudiVZ copied. The current StudiVZ functionality set is still very similar to what Facebook was at one time - it is just that Facebook changes so fast while StudiVZ did not change at all that they now seem very different.
I encourage competition but this is plainly rude. There is only one thing that is worse than getting hit in the nuts: Getting hit in the face by another guy’s nuts.
It is fine if some third world, especially china copies. And russia also a dark world. And nobody can help. But being in europe, you will have to pay up for copying, and change interface later too.
xvcxvcxvxcvvxcv
“Rob E” and “EU and copycate?”:
Check out “crapster’s” post earlier in the comments section. If there is anyone who should be prosecuted for copying it’s should be the master plagiarizer himself - “f’kerberg”. I wonder how the Harvard team felt to get hit in the face by f’kerberg’s nuts. They should have just cut ‘em off (thanks Jesse Jackson for re-popularizing the phrase).
This f’kerberg character has no ethics none whatsoever, first he ripped-off someone else’s idea, then they, assbook (and I’m sure he’s the only guy calling the shots there (given the string of exec departures) tried to screw their users over by selling their personal and private info on shopping transactions to hungry advertisers in clear violation of anyone’s definition of privacy. Why would anyone want to root for these a’holes at assbook?
Can anyone see the irony with Scrabulous? LOL. Of course, the same Facebook fanboys who went berserk against Hasbro and Matel will support Facebook for suing those knock-offs.
The German Blogger Don Alphonso (www.blogbar.de) already summarized all this stuff some months ago. There is a lot of monetizing pressure in this market right now, the media conglomerates need fresh money for their declining print divisions and their suspected online cash cows don’t deliver enough milk. So taking competition out of business is THE option.
Someone remember the infamous screenshot of the studivz page with php error? mentioning the webfolder root as /usr/www/users/fakebook ?
see here http://www.flickr.com/photos/bumi/285541845/
Facebook should also look towards china, where their service has been regularly down over the last weeks, whereas a clone (even same colour) is benefiting from huge advertisement in public areas… Maybe they are some guys there that have understood that this service would help them to get many information from chinese people, but do not want Facebook California Inc. to grab it…
Fred Wilson seems damn quite maybe the Berlin meeting should have been about this perhaps?
I can’t stand it talking to people that lose their mind if you tell them that the VZ network is a blatant rip-off. How much more apparent does it have to be? But because they lay ownership to it because they feel it was a German idea, their brains turn into ape skit and make up all kinds of justifications.
Seriously people, they stole the CSS and PHP to build VZ! Come on! If I steal some BMW from the factory floor, and slap a WMB label on it; should I not be sued?
I hope Facebook lawyers them into the ground or until the VZ network is sold at a loss. Then I hope they go on a blood thirsty rampage to sue, shut down, or absorb all the knock-off sites around the world.
First Europe wants to be a bratty teenager complaining about American actions around the world (granted with some validity) but love the fact that they were and are protected by our security blanket, which, btw, prevented everyone in all of Europe from speaking Russian and living in misery. Now they want to whine about being sued for stealing ideas, instead of actually coming up with their own ideas.
Don’t steal someone else’s stuff and claim it as your own. It really does not help your image! And I don’t think Germans have to be reminded of their image.
Can you stand it if someone told you that f’kerberg blatantly ripped-off someone else idea and possibly their code as well. That’s what the Harvard Law suit against f’kerberg was about. Where have you been?
so with the new facebook. will other sites who already have that look and feel be able to sue facebook?
Also if this is the new facebook, will they have a legal claim for sites that continue to use the old facebook look and feel.
Personally from what I have heard, this new facebook looks like crap.
I think this is the beginning of the rise and fall of facebook.
Arrington, you are not a lawyer.
Trade-dress is pretty hard to pull off — it comes down to actual HTML code as to if something is actually the same or is different.
Please stop being the judge and jury — be a journalist and get off your crack pipe.