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StudiVZ, the Facebook clone (and by clone, we mean exact duplicate) in Germany, says in an email that they still havn’t received the lawsuit complaint filed by Facebook on Friday. The lawsuit claims intellectual property infringement and accuses StudiVZ of running a “knock-off” of Facebook.

StudiVZ says they “cannot comment in detail” about the lawsuit since they haven’t seen it yet. But that isn’t stopping them from talking smack about Facebook in general. StudiVZ says they’ve filed for a declaratory judgment in the District Court in Stuttgart, Germany to “to have the responsible German court declare that the claims made by Facebook are without merit,” whatever they may be.

Marcus Riecke, the CEO of StudiVZ, goes on to call Facebook arrogant and says they are trying to create an international monopoly over social networking:

Now that Facebook, despite trying hard, has not been successful in the German market, the company seeks to obstruct studiVZ through court action. Their strategy appears to be: If you can’t beat them, sue them. There are numerous social networks. Facebook was not the first and certainly isn’t the only one. By attempting to harm studiVZ through a meritless California lawsuit, Facebook is arrogantly laying claim to an international monopoly over social networking sites that the facts show it does not deserve.

These comments would be credible if StudiVZ wasn’t such a direct ripoff of Facebook’s look and feel (see screen shot). Early versions of the StudiVZ site reportedly “borrowed” Facebook’s CSS files as well.

Perhaps StudiVZ could save themselves the legal bills and just hire a designer to come up with a unique profile and interface instead of posturing and filing counter suits in Germany.

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Facebook is pursuing social networks it believes have copied their design or features by suing German social network StudiVZ. The Financial Times has reported that Facebook filed a suit in the Californian Supreme Court against the German company for what it claims is an infringement of Facebook’s “look, feel, features and services”.

StudiVZ claims to have 10 million active members, and is the largest social network in the German-speaking world, covering Germany, Belgium and Switzerland. The network is actually comprised of three different sites; each one a separate social network aimed at different segments of the market. StudiVZ.net is the classic site for college-aged students, SchuelerVZ.net is for high school students and MeinVZ.net is for older adults (these three networks were very hard to decipher in German when I attempted to sign up).

Facebook does seem to have a claim here, as the German site looks like nothing more than Facebook in red and translated in German. Everything from the first public page, the sign-up page and the profile pages look eerily similar to the US-based social network. StudiVZ was acquired earlier this year by the German media group Georg von Holtzbrinck, with an acquisition price in the €100M range. They always say to sue where the money is, and Facebook has certainly found a pile of it by targeting Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck.

Disclaimer: This is not the real Mark Zuckerberg profile in StudiVZ (at least we don’t think so).

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