Tinder Sues Dating App Bumble for Allegedly Copying Them

Tinder says the Bumble creators copied their ideas.

Tinder's parent company, Match Group, is going after one of its main competitors, Bumble.

CNN reports that Match filed a lawsuit against the dating app which creates a space for women to make the first move. The legal docs state that Bumble, which was co-created by three former Tinder employees, stole their "world-changing, card swipe-based, mutual opt-in premise." It also states that Bumble has features that were "learned of and developed confidentially" while the Bumble co-creators were at Tinder. This includes the "undo" button, a feature that they say is "nearly, if not literally, identical" to Bumble's "backtrack" option which lets users go back if they accidentally swiped the wrong way on a person.

Although Match "applauds Bumble's efforts at empowering women, both in its app and offline" and "cares deeply both about its women users and about women's issues generally", they noted that "this case is simply about forcing Bumble to stop competing with Match and Tinder using Match's own inventions, patented designs, trademarks, and trade secrets."

Bumble isn't the only company to have the "mutual opt-in premise" though. But it seems that Match is only going after Bumble. This could be due to the fact that the former Tinder employees created it, reports that Match was unsuccessful in buying Bumble last year, or because they're launching their own option for women to make the first move.

As for Bumble's CEO, Whitney Wolfe Herd, who left her co-founded company Tinder after she reported several verbal and sexual harassment claims against them, said that the company doesn't cross her mind anymore.

"I actually don't think about Tinder," Wolfe Herd said in a conversation with Gayle King at SXSW earlier this year, according to CNN. "I don't believe revenge is part of my agenda. I'm a firm believer that just like hate spreads hate, love and kindness spread love and kindness. We're doing our own thing."

But it seems like Match is thinking the exact opposite.

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