WFSU – Oct 31 – In dueling lawsuits, Match, which owns Tinder, alleges that Bumble stole Tinder's intellectual property. Bumble says those claims are bogus, designed to drive down Bumble's worth and "poison Bumble in the investment market," according to Bumble's lawsuit. One of the central questions revolves around Tinder's patented system for connecting people over the Internet. The matching is based on mutual interest, as expressed through a swiping motion. It's a real patent. But Bumble says it shouldn't be. Patents are supposed to cover inventions, not abstract ideas. Design a machine that does something, and you can patent it. Have an general idea, an overall concept? No patent. "You don't get a patent for saying 'cure dementia with a drug.' You have to say what the drug is," explains Daniel Nazer, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. But in the Internet era, people discovered they could get a patent for an otherwise abstract idea as long as they tied it to an existing technology.
by Camila Domonoske
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