Learning German gives everyone the opportunity to gain enough knowledge to get to know Germans online. The social network StudiVZ may be suitable for this. However, this site had some problems with Facebook.
Facebook filed a lawsuit against the German national social network StudiVZ. Accusation: StudiVZ brazenly copied its competitor's ideas. Giant against dwarf, David against Goliath. However, before the court, all are equal. So, Facebook failed to get the upper hand over the German market leader StudiVZ. On the contrary: the Cologne court brought serious charges against Facebook itself.
On June 16, 2009, the civil chamber of the Cologne court rejected this accusation. Facebook accused the Berliners of allegedly copying both the source code and the basic design of the site. Markus Berger de Leon, owner of StudiVZ, triumphs: 'We are glad that the Cologne court completely dismissed the accusation. After all, bringing such an accusation requires experts and money. For us, this court decision is also a signal to the market that what we offer is legal.'
In fact, in the early days of StudiVZ, the hidden code of this site contained the word 'Fakebook'. Because of this and due to the obvious visual similarity, Facebook wanted to ban the Germans from continuing their work. Now a new accusation in this case is being considered in the USA.
225 million people use Facebook monthly, and this site is the world's largest social network. StudiVZ, together with its affiliate sites SchuelerVZ and MeinVZ, is the leader of the German market and has 12.9 million registered users. Facebook states that it is 'disappointed' with the court's decision. The company insists that StudiVZ used Facebook's intellectual property for its own benefit and says it will resort to further legal means.
The Cologne court, 'despite obvious similarities and correspondences between the two sites,' did not see any unfair copying. After all, according to the court, there is no deception on the site regarding the origin of these similarities. In other words, StudiVZ did not try to convince visitors that they were on Facebook's site. According to the court, the decisive factor was that at the time the German network launched in November 2005, Facebook was absolutely unknown in Germany. It became popular in Germany only thanks to its German version, which went online in March. So now you can find German friends on both sites. Of course, this requires knowledge of the language, which can be learned in German courses or with a tutor.
Regarding the first, the Cologne judge sharply criticizes Facebook: according to him, the American lawyers only 'built suspicions' and were not specific enough to justify a comparison of the source code with the help of an expert. Markus Berger de Leon remarks: 'It is remarkable how much energy Facebook has invested in this accusation. It seems that this is about establishing a foothold in the German market bypassing competition.'
According to the court decision, the similarities between the two sites may be based on the fact that the founders of StudiVZ were familiar with Facebook and wrote the program for their site modeled on the American network using information available to everyone on the Internet. Now Facebook can appeal to the higher regional court in Cologne.
It is impossible to predict whether the German verdict will affect the accusation in the USA. It also remains an open question whether Facebook will go to the next instance. Berger de Leon doubts: 'The verdict is very clear.'