Nasima Khatun
Three months after their court case, it has now been announced that Muslim marriage app, Muzmatch has lost its battle against Tinder owners, Match Group.
Posting to Twitter, Shahzad Younas talked about the disappointing result.
“As you may know, we’ve been in a long court battle with Match Group – the multi billion-dollar conglomerate that owns Tinder – to keep the name we’ve been using since 2011. It breaks my heart to say, but today we found out that we’ve lost our case.
“As a Muslim, I understand the difficulties in finding a life partner – something that’s central to our faith. It was even harder a decade ago when I first started muzmatch from my bedroom,” he continued. “Alhamdulillah, the best part of my day is reading the hundreds of emails from our new couples beginning their married life together. We’re the biggest Muslim dating and marriage app in the world. This hasn’t gone unnoticed.”
“I have truly been touched by the love and solidarity I’ve received from the global Muslim community who recognise the very real contribution we’re making. Thank you from the bottom of my heart… I am firmly of the belief that blessings are to be found in all setbacks we face on this journey together. We’re more focused than ever on our mission of transforming how Muslims meet and marry.
“We will not let Match Group kill us,” the statement concluded.
Muzmatch is now hoping to appeal the decision.
The news comes after Younas went public with the legal battle back in January after Match Group refused to back down with their accusations.
In the initial blogpost, he outlined the entire timeline of events leading up to the most recent UK lawsuit, even going as far as to include the times that Match Group tried to buy Muzmatch, not just once, not just twice but three times, for a whopping 35 million dollars. However, Younis said that by the third offer, he “lost all interest” in selling it off and instead, continued to grow the business as much as he could. But it seems as though the rejection only fuelled Match Group.
Describing the entire ordeal as “ugly”, he wrote: “We are a small startup fighting to defend ourselves against the largest dating company in the world.”
Match Group claimed that Muzmatch’s branding and services are too similar to that of Tinder, including the app features, the colour palette and even the name – yeah, apparently Match Group refuses to let anyone else use the English word “match” in their name… Yikes.
Even though Younas refused to change the latter, he did in fact, change up the branding to replace the heart and font used in the official Muzmatch logo. Not only that, but later removed the “swipe” feature, just to cut all potential associations with the competitor brand.
He vowed to fight it until the very end and kept his promise, even though it didn’t go exactly as planned.
After 3 hours of intense cross-examination and multiple back and forths between the two opposing parties, the trial came to an end and Muzmatch’s fate lay in the hands of Judge Caddick QC.