Bumble has received a positive response to the recent challenge it made against Tinder’s multiple patent claims.
It’s claiming that Whitney Wolfe Herd’s female-first social app “copied Tinder’s world-changing, card-swipe-based, mutual opt-in premise”, in a lawsuit that was first laid out in March 2018.
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has agreed to review the authenticity of Match Group’s swiping patent. It also revealed that there is “reasonable likelihood” that Bumble will prevail in invalidating the claims.
A final decision is expected to be made by the end of 2020.
The two apps have been embroiled in an intense legal battle for the past two years now, after the Match Group subsidiary first alleged that Bumble’s user interface was “virtually identical” to its own.
Two weeks later, Bumble retaliated with a $400 million lawsuit of its own, accusing Match Group of multiple infringements. These included the fraudulent obtaining of trade secrets, referring to the online dating umbrella’s past acquisition attempts.
Both parties failed to settle the disputes outside of the courts but did agree to keep all of the related evidence confidential.
Wolfe Herd was famously part of Tinder’s founding team, but left the project while filing a sexual harassment case against her ex-boyfriend and fellow co-founder Justin Mateen.
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