Facebook’s new ‘Rooms’ app Room Inc’s ‘Room’ app
Following the launch of Facebook’s new “Rooms” app for iPhone, the company behind a similar piece of software called “Room” is claiming the social media outlet copied its intellectual property. The Room application, which like Facebook’s app allows users to create and invite others to chatrooms while remaining anonymous, was first released on the App Store back in September.
The company’s Damien Rottemberg, Co-Founder and CTO of Room, sent over the following statement on the situation:
“We don’t know what happened, if something was leaked from VCs we were talking to that are very connected with Facebook, if it’s from high Facebook executives that we have on our Facebook friend’s list, friends of friends working at Facebook, or someone at Facebook that saw our app and thought it was cool enough to copy,” stated Damien Rottemberg, Co-Founder and CTO of Room. “We’re sure this is not a coincidence. We don’t understand how Facebook, with all their lawyers, could have released an app with the same name and features. We won’t let this happen and we want to defend all entrepreneurs with great ideas and great visions.”
It isn’t the first time Facebook has been accused of copying another company’s software. Developers FiftyThree weren’t too happy when Facebook decided to release Paper, an app that now shares a name with FiftyThree’s popular drawing application. A similar situation happened when Facebook’s Instagram decided to release a product with the same name as an existing app called Bolt.
A spokesperson for Room Inc. said its founders Damien Rottemberg and Frank-David Cohen are “debating legal action.”
