Facebook Prosecutes German Counterpart

One of the world’s greatest online social networking major ‘Facebook’ has filed a lawsuit regarding copyright infringement against a German rival, as per the Financial Times.

StudiVZ, a German-based social networking platform, is accused of imitating the appearance, feel, services and attributes of Facebook, which includes its ‘wall’ feature, as per the complaint which was recently filed in California.

Claiming itself to be one of the biggest social networking domains in Europe, StudiVZ is popular especially in German-speaking nations such as Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

The lawsuit claims that the websites are so identical that StudiVZ simply replaced Facebook’s blue-colored scheme with a red one.

StudiVZ has 10 million users, according to the Berlin-based company’s site. The site was bought by German publisher Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck in the previous year. It provides several features to its users, who are mainly students, such as allowing them to keep and maintain a personal page that includes information regarding their name, age, interests, courses, study subjects and group memberships within the site.

Moreover, users can also upload their favorite photos on their personal pages. The search feature enables them to find their fellow students, former classmates, learning partners, and also other people who share common interests with them.

On the other hand, Facebook is not only popular amongst the European audience, but is also well-known throughout the world. In fact, it outperforms MySpace, another famous social networking site, as far as global share is concerned. It, however, is far behind MySpace in the US.

Facebook had launched its own German language version of its service in March.