Kiss off

21 March 2018 By Jennifer Saba Follow @jennifersaba

The women-friendly dating app dissed its $13 bln rival in an ad after Match sued over patent infringement. “We’ll never be yours” is a strong rejection considering the paucity of suitors in the hookup trade. Then again, playing hard to get is a time-honored negotiating tactic.

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Dating app Bumble responded to a patent-infringement lawsuit filed by larger rival Match Group with a newspaper ad on March 20. “Dear Match Group, we swipe left on you. We swipe left on your multiple attempts to buy us, copy us, and now, intimidate us. We’ll never be yours. No matter the price tag, we’ll never compromise our values.”

Match on March 16 filed the lawsuit against Bumble Trading. Match owns Tinder and Match.com.

Match said in a statement about the ad, “It’s our responsibility to defend the work of our employees, which we are doing, through lawsuits against two separate companies. Also, we’re not going to comment on any conversations we have about acquisitions, but if we were invited to look at an acquisition target and signed a mutual non-disclosure agreement at their request, we wouldn’t violate that NDA by discussing it in the media.”

Bumble was founded by a former Tinder executive Whitney Wolfe Herd, who owns a 20 percent stake in the company. Dating social network Badoo owns 79 percent, according to Recode.

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