Let the “J” wars begin. Forbes is reporting that late last year, Spark Networks, the parent company of Jewish dating site JDate, filed a federal lawsuit in New York against rival JSwipe, a Tinder-inspired Jewish dating app, seeking to enjoin JSwipe’s use of the letter “J.” JDate also claims that JSwipe infringes on its patented software that connects two people who are romantically interested in each other.
“It has always been our mission to foster marriages that lead to babies,” Spark CEO Michael Egan told the New York Observer. “That’s why this whole issue has become so important, because we don’t want to be distracted from our mission.”
“I believe that J belongs to the Jewish community, not any corporation,” JSwipe founder David Yarus told the New York Observer. “The last thing I would ever want JSwipe to be compared to, associated with, or mistaken for, is JDate. We started JSwipe because millennial Jews were embarrassed to be on existing Jewish dating sites.”
JDate’s website claims it has 650,000 members worldwide with 400,000 in the United States. JSwipe founder David Yarus recently told the New York Observer that his app has 385,000 users worldwide.
