Battle of the Matchmaker Apps
For those in the dating world, the decision to use a particular dating app likely has less to do with litigation than how the app actually works, or more importantly, whether it works at all.
However, for the makers of the online matchmaking apps, the litigation matters, and it's personal. Earlier this year, Match.com (the Goliath of the dating world) filed a lawsuit against Bumble, the latest rising star in the dating app scene (and the David in this matchup). And this metaphor seems more than apt, as Bumble recently fired back with a lawsuit of its own against Match.
Swipe Left on Love
If you didn't know, Match.com is the biggest of the online matchmaking services out there. It owns Tinder, OKCupid, and other dating sites you may or may not have heard of before. Match Group, as the conglomerate is called, is worth over $2 billion, with over $1 billion in annual revenue.
Meanwhile, Bumble is relatively new startup that created a matching platform that, like many others, utilizes the same basic premise of people posting profiles, a system matching people, and those people connecting upon mutual matching. However, Bumble is unique in that it is a "ladies-first" platform, and that feature has gotten it a lot of attention and subscribers. At one point, Match sought to buy Bumble, but that deal fizzled out.
Swipe Right on Litigation
In the fallout of Match not buying (or even investing) in Bumble, the two companies have been at each other's throats. In March, Match sued Bumble for patent infringement and trade secret violations. Several months later, after negotiations failed, Bumble fired back with a lawsuit of their own, alleging Match also violated trade secrets, and also disparaged Bumble in order to make it less attractive to other investors and users. Notably, Bumble is pre-IPO, at the moment.
Both companies seem to be eager to litigate the matters, each asserting that the other's claims are meritless. And while it looks like both companies have swiped left on working together, they certainly seem to have both swiped right and matched on litigation.
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