Bumble Sues Tinder Parent Company For $400M Over Accusations Of Stolen Trade Secrets

It seems dating apps are just suing each other these days. Tinder’s parent company Match Groups recently sued Bumble, which is another app that pairs people online but with a focus on empowering women in the process. In response, Bumble is hitting Match back with its own lawsuit amounting to $400 million and accusing it of stealing trade secrets.

According to the lawsuit, Match supposedly stole trade secrets from Bumble using “fraudulent” behavior, Recode reports. Apparently, Match also hurt the dating app’s chances of an equity investment sale or even the sale of the whole company when it filed its patent infringement lawsuit earlier this month. To Bumble, the move by Tinder’s parent company equivalent to “chilling the market for an investment in Bumble.”

Match is actually trying to purchase Bumble, which is one of the reasons being attributed to its lawsuit. This detail is important because Bumble is also accusing Match of using the corporate information it managed to gather when it was conducting its due diligence of the rival dating app for its own gains.

Match’s initial offer to buy Bumble was $450 million, which the latter considered too small. After the rejection, a series of meetings still took place, but Match overplayed its hand when it filed the patent infringement lawsuit against Bumble. This was noted in Bumble’s own lawsuit.

“Unwilling to pay fair value for Bumble, Match tried to poison Bumble in the investment market by filing bogus intellectual property claims to wrongfully disparage the Bumble platform,” the legal documents read.

In response, Match sent a statement to Recode, calling the lawsuit petulant.

“This lawsuit is a petulant and meritless response to our patent and trade secret claims. Last week, Bumble claimed our complaint was baseless and won’t affect them, and this week they claim it is “chilling” the sale of their company. They also shockingly claim that our patents issued by the United States Patent & Trademark Office are ‘bogus’. We obviously think their lawsuit has no substance and look forward to proving that in court,” the statement reads.