Facebook has come under fire for its new Rooms app. The maker of a similar app, called Room, claims Zuckerberg and co copied his idea.
Room hit the App Store in September, and was followed a month later by Facebook’s Rooms.
Those behind the original Room app aren’t best pleased and are considering legal action.
“We don’t know what happened,” Room co-founder and CTO Damien Rottemberg told 9to5Mac in a statement, “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.
“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.”
Fighting words indeed.
Facebook has previously been accused of copying others’ work when it released Paper, an app with the same name as a drawing application. Instagram – owned by Facebook – also launched an app called Bolt, which, again, has the same name as an existing app.
Read more: Forget empty promises and stop experimenting on us, Facebook!
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
