The British founded biggest Muslim dating and marriage app in the world, talks rebranding, after losing infringement lawsuit against a US online dating company Match.
The lawsuit was brought on by Match Group, which has a market capitalisation of about $37bn, and claims trademark infringement over use of the word “match”.
In the two-day trial at the UK’s Intellectual Property Enterprise Court this January, presiding deputy High Court judge Nicholas Caddick’s revealed rulings on the matter.
The 39-page verdict was released on Wednesday, April 20th, where QC Judge Caddick, referring to Mr Younas, writes that while “it was not his intention to make a link to or take any benefit from the 1996 Match.com” his actions infringed on Match’s rights.
In court Tim Austen, who argued the prosecution’s case, pointed out that Muzmatch, having access to Google Analytics, used keywords like ‘match’ to establish their SEO strategy and gain 11,725 click throughs to their website.
Judge Caddick further states that when viewed objectively, “the intention to benefit from the reputation of the Match Marks is clear from Muzmatch’s SEO strategy.”
With the court having ruled in their favour, Match Group’s publicist tells Asian Sunday “We have, and will always protect the work, creativity, and innovations of our employees, and are grateful that the court recognised this and ruled accordingly.
“Muzmatch has unfairly benefited from Match Group’s reputation and investment in its brand” says publicist Maggie Gillespie.
However, Muzz CEO Shahzad Younas, disagrees saying the success of Muzmatch was down to how “serious the app is about marriage, without the element of family contacts or intermediaries, a process which many Muslims find awkward and outdated.”
“In the 11 years we have existed as a brand, there are no credible examples of us being affiliated with Match.com, nor has there been any confusion at all.”
The ruling was very one sided according to Mr Younas, who states evidence of “over 60 million records of customers reaching out to us and Match Group, saying there was no confusion” was discarded in court.
Match Group previously made several “strategic” attempts to buy Muzmatch between 2017 and 2019 all of which were rejected says CEO of Muzz in an interview with Asian Sunday.
In a Twitter post, Shahzad Younas, tweets “First they try and buy you. Then they sue you. They win and try and kill you. Instead, you came out stronger with a slick new product that’s 1000x better than the old one.”
“A few years back they reached out to us, to find out more about us and were interested in the Muslim space and made a series of offers. We shared data with them, but when we declined their offers, it was almost like clockwork.
“They then brought up a competitor and sued us in the UK first and then the US as well.
“So there’s definitely a playbook on their side. They did the same thing with bumble, and they’re doing the same thing with us.”
Bumble, another online dating app which offers services other than dating, was also sued by Match Group for being a Tinder-clone.
Younas further adds saying “Bumble have much deeper pockets than we do, so they can put up a much bigger fight than we can. I think they settled a lump sum sort of agreement on their side.”
Within the app itself there were issues around the ‘swipe gesture’ being a patent infringement, as users navigated the app by swiping right to show an interest in a match or left to reject a potential.
Tinder, which is now owned by Match Group, since 2017, popularised the swipe feature used on many dating apps now.
Jonathan Badeen co-founder and creator of the swipe feature, in an article for the Insider, writes “Tinder’s swipe was the first to accomplish two things at once: navigating and decision-making.”
Pressure from Match Group around a year ago, made the Muslim dating app remove the swiping gesture to avoid any copyright infringement.
“For us we were never pressured about swiping, as a gesture, because it was something we wanted to move away from more generally, our app is more on a serious side anyway” says Shahzad Younas.
The new site being renamed as ‘Muzz’ he says has been “internally embraced quite fast, as its short, catchy, and simple. People will remember it.
“We want to be a lot broader as a platform, so the name change unlocks where we want to be in the long term.”
Reluctant to share the “big” future plans the app has, Younas says, “customers are absolutely loving the new brand, so the reception has been really good.”
With the new launch, some of the new updates include video and voice profiling, where users can now upload videos of themselves, as well as voice notes.
