Social networking giant Facebook has lost a court battle in which it attempted to prove a German rival website copied its design.
Facebook accused the StudiVZ site of illegally obtaining source code needed to create the site’s graphics and designs seen on some of the its features.
“Although there are overlaps and similarities between the two sites that are impossible to overlook, no dishonest copying could be established by the judge,” the court ruled.
The court also said that the German website had nothing to gain by imitating Facebook, because Facebook was mainly used in North America during 2005, when the German website went online. A German-language version of Facebook was not offered until March 2008.
Facebook reportedly provided insufficient proof to support the allegation that source codes had been stolen, and the court also pointed out that some of its programming data is already freely available online.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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