Bumble ‘swipes left’ on Match Group’s lawsuit allegations

Match Group, which owns Tinder, Match.com and OKCupid, recently filed a lawsuit against Bumble, claiming that its rival violated two of its patents. Now Bumble has clapped back. In an open letter published on its website, Bumble says in no uncertain terms that it believes the lawsuit to be an extension of Match's ongoing attempts to acquire it and calls the lawsuit "baseless."

"We swipe left on you. We swipe left on your multiple attempts to buy us, copy us and, now, to intimidate us," Bumble said in its letter. "We'll never be yours. No matter the price tag, we'll never compromise our values." When reports of the lawsuit surfaced, many proposed that it was linked to Match's buyout attempts and could just be a tactic to encourage Bumble to sell or scare off any other interested buyers. TechCrunch asked Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd if the company had received any offers from other companies, to which she replied, "Bumble is very excited about other potential opportunities that are still very much in discussion, and none of the recent news has affected these conversations."

Tinder recently incorporated a Bumble-like feature that gives women control over initiating a conversation -- something that Bumble cites multiple times in its letter. "We're more than a feature where women make the first move. Empowerment is in our DNA. You can't copy that," it said. "So when you announced recently, in another attempt to intimidate us, that you were going to try to replicate our core, women-first offering and plug it in to Tinder, we applauded you for the attempt to make that subsidiary safer."

Bumble goes on to call Match Group a bully and emphasize that it won't be intimidated by the litigation. "We as a company will always swipe right for empowered moves, and left on attempts to disempower us. We encourage every user to do the same. As one of our mottos goes, 'bee kind or leave,'" writes Bumble. "We wish you the best, but consider yourselves blocked."