The Match Group, the owner of sites such as Tinder and OkCupid, have successfully blocked a rival dating site over the use of a confusingly similar name.
Match brought a claim against MuzMatch, which is the biggest Muslim dating site, in the UK Intellectual Property Enterprise Court for trade mark infringement. The claim stated that the owners of MuzMatch were using keyword to drive traffic away from the Match Group sites and to their own site while providing an indication of association.
This was successful, as this week the Court ruled that there was a likelihood of confusion between the marks, and a risk that consumers would believe the two sites were connected.
MuzMatch did try and defend the claim, citing that the name was a combination of the words Muslim and Match, but this wasn’t enough. Following the judgment, the Muzmatch’s chief executive, Shahzad Younas, said he would appeal against it and confirmed this didn’t deter him from continuing the site.
Another success for the Match Group within the dating site world, but its too soon to see if this is the end of the journey for this pair.
