In an interesting twist to the on-going legal battle between U.S.-based social network Facebook and German-based social network StudiVZ, the former instituted action in the Cologne district court against StudiVZ for infringing its intellectual property rights. StudiVZ belongs to Germany’s Georg von Holtzbrinck media group. 

With that, StudiVZ seemed to have followed up its “first round win” on 4 November last year with a “second round win.” According to documents published by the California Northern District Court in the U.S. on Nov. 3 last year,  Facebook and StudiVZ had agreed to a private mediation of their continuing legal dispute. The deadline for an outcome in the mediation was set for Oct. 31, 2009 – 15 months after Facebook first filed the action. At the time, this was seen by some as a successful attempt by StudiVZ to play for time. 

In Cologne, Facebook again alleged StudiVZ had copied its logo, features and service from Facebook, had illegal access to Facebook’s computer system and had stolen data, including the Facebook source code, reported the German publication Kress.de. Shortly after the action was lodged in the U.S. in July last year, StudiVZ filed for a declaratory ruling in a Stuttgart court, which we interpreted as an “effort to wrestle the home game advantage away from Facebook.” This was later confirmed when StudiVZ submitted documents in the U.S. district court disputing the jurisdiction of the court in the case and suggesting the dispute should be heard by a Stuttgart court. 

If that was indeed the strategy behind the declaratory ruling, the Facebook action in Cologne must be seen as a “second round win” for Facebook. 

According to Kress, a spokesman of StudiVZ again denied all allegations contained in the Cologne complaint.