Tinder Sues Bumble for Allegedly Copying App Features

Tinder's parent company Match Group swiped right on a lawsuit with its competition Bumble on Friday, accusing the app of stealing trade secrets and patents.

According to CNN, the company filed a lawsuit against Bumble on Friday in Texas accusing them of copying the "world-changing, card swipe-based, mutual opt-in premise" that Tinder bases its dating app on.

The company claims Whitney Wolfe Herd, who co-founded Bumble after she left Tinder in 2014, stole multiple upcoming features Tinder was ready to role out for her own app. Match Group specifically listed the "Matching Process System and Method" (seeing profiles as cards, swiping left or right depending on whether or not you're interested in that person) and "Display Screen or Portion Thereof With a Graphical User Interface of a Mobile Device" (the app's appearance) as the specific patents Bumble stole according to The Verge.

A Match Group representative gave a statement to Recode regarding the lawsuit, saying the company has "invested significant resources and creative expertise in the development" and was forced to take action. The company had previously attempted to buy out Bumble with a $450M offer in November, but the company declined.

Wolfe Herd, who co-founded Tinder in 2012, left the company two years later after accusing co-workers of sexual harassment and discrimination. She sued the company, but the suit was settled out of court.

Designers Chris Gulczynski and Sarah Mick left Tinder to work for Wolfe Herd as she started up Bumble. The lawsuit claims that at the time of Mick and Gulcznski's departure, the two knew about the "Undo" feature that Tinder would be rolling on in an update in the near future and copied it with Bumble "Backtrack" feature, which allows users to redo a swipe if they accidentally swiped the wrong way. Gulczynski had also allegedly been working on photo messaging between users during his time at Tinder, another feature now available at Bumble.

CNN reports both Gulczynski and Mick have since left Bumble, and did not respond when the network reached out for comment on the lawsuit.

Bumble made headlines back on March 6 when it announced a new policy regarding photos used on the app's profiles.

According to a statement, the company is now banning all photos that show a person holding or wielding a firearm in their pictures, unless they can be identified as a member of law enforcement or the military. Along with a team of engineers scanning across the millions of users, the app also asked its users to report any profiles if they have firearms in their photos.