Tinder sues rival dating app Bumble for patent infringement

Match Group, the parent company of popular online dating platform Tinder, has sued rival Bumble, alleging the latter infringed upon its patents. Tinder alleges that Bumble copied Tinder's UI including iconic card-swipe based and mutual opt-in premise.

The lawsuit from Tinder accuses former employees Chris Gulczynski and Sarah Mick, who now work for Bumble, of copying design elements. "Bumble has released at least two features that its co-founders learned of and developed confidentially while at Tinder in violation of confidentiality agreements," the suit from Tinder added.

Tinder and Bumble: It's complicated

Bumble was founded by Whitney Wolfe, who was also a co-founder of Tinder along with Sean Rad, Jonathan Badeen, Justin Mateen, Joe Munoz, Dinesh Moorjan. Wolfe departed from Tinder in 2014 after alleging sexual harassment. She also filed a lawsuit against Tinder in the same year. The suit was later settled for "approximately $1 million", a Forbes report said.

Later, Chris Gulczynski and Sarah Mick joined Bumble. According to the lawsuit, the designers had information about Tinder's "undo" button which was later implemented in Bumble as well. The feature was "nearly, if not literally, identical" to Bumble's, the lawsuit added.

"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," Recode quotes a Match Group spokesperson as saying.

Match Group, which also offers brands like Match, PlentofFish, Meetic, OkCupid, OurTime and Pairs, claims to have generated "5.2 million relationships" in the last four years in North America. Its products are available in more than 190 countries and 42 languages.

Bumble, which was launched in 2014, is actually similar to Tinder with subtle changes. For instance, it requires women to send the message first to get a conversation started. According to a recent Forbes report, Bumble had more than 20 million users.

(with inputs from HT Correspondent)