Social networking website Facebook has approached a United States court in order to get the German website StudiVZ to shut down. Facebook alleges that StudiVZ is its illegal ‘knockoff’ and therefore wants the German website to stop copying it and also surrender all money it has made from it. 

In a civil suit filed July 18 in US District Court in San Jose, the lawyers of the Facebook social networking website have mentioned, ‘This is a case to stop StudiVZ from operating a knockoff of Facebook.’ They have thereafter added, ‘A great part, if not all, of StudiVZ's success is due to copying and misuse of Facebook's intellectual property.’

The German website StudiVZ was created one year after Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook in 2004 while he was still a student at the Harvard University. The sole idea behind creating Facebook was to provide a means to remain connected with college friends, family and kin. The German website’s name StudiVZ too means ‘students directory’ in that language and serves the same purpose as Facebook. The StudiVZ has been increasing in popularity and was launched with around three million members in 2007. Facebook is demanding a jury trial and argues that StudiVZ should be shut down and be made to pay an unspecified amount of cash in damages.