Facebook Files Lawsuit Against Power.com

Power.com is a social networking company with 5 million users and is based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  The company raised $8 million Series A investment from Draper Fisher Jurvetson.  On December 30, Facebook sued Power.com.

Power.com aggregates all of the activities from different social networks and places it on one page.  Facebook claims that Power.com is violating copyright and trademarks.  Facebook also referenced the scraping of proprietary data from the social network in the lawsuit.

“After discussing the issues with Power.com for about a month without reaching a resolution, we filed a lawsuit to enforce our terms of service, maintain the integrity of our site and to assure our users’ privacy and security are protected,” stated Barry Schnitt, a spokesman for Facebook.

Steve Vachani, founder of Power.com stated that his company has been in discussions with Facebook to get their feedback.  Facebook suggested that Power.com uses Facebook Connect instead of scraping the data directly.

Facebook attempted to stop Power.com for using data without permission.  The first complaint was sent on December 1 when Power.com was first announced.  On December 12, Vachani stated that Facebook Connect would be implemented in two weeks but then asked for an extension.  After December 26, Power.com kept using Facebook in an unauthorized manner.

That was the last straw.  Stay tuned for more updates regarding this lawsuit.

[via TechCrunch]

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