A frustrated app developer is claiming Facebook ripped off his idea for the social network’s chatroom style app, Rooms, which launched last week.
“Facebook is taking our lives away,” said app developer Damien Rottemberg, who launched the app, Room, in September.
Both apps were inspired by chatrooms popular in the early days of the Internet.
Rottemberg said he and business partner Frank-David Colon have been developing Room since December, and met with venture capitalists in New York and Silicon Valley in March. Rottemberg applied in March for a trademark for Room, and the application is still pending.
The app is described on iTunes as “the first mobile application that enables you to create and join mini private chatrooms up to 500 people. Each room is private, secure, protected and confidential.”
But last week, Facebook announced Rooms, and developer Josh Miller wrote on FB’s blog, “One of the magical things about the early days of the web was connecting to people who you would never encounter otherwise in your daily life. Forums, message boards and chatrooms were meeting places for people who didn’t necessarily share geographies or social connections, but had something in common.”
Several of the app features are different, but Rottemberg insists: “The description is exactly the same, the name is the same. The whole thing is the same . . . I don’t think it’s a coincidence. ”
He added, “We want Facebook to take down their app and to apologize to us, saying that we are the real app Room and they made a mistake by copying us.”
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