On 14 July 2022, WhatsApp LLC and WhatsApp Ireland (together, "WhatsApp") filed a lawsuit against Mobile Innovations, S.L. and Mr. Antonio José Calatrava Pérez (together with WhatsApp, the "Parties"), which was allocated to the Commercial Court no. 14 of Madrid (P.O. no. 359/2022), for they considered that the development, promotion, operation and commercialisation of Wossip and certain functionalities of OwnSpy amounted to an infringement of WhatsApp's intellectual property rights, an act of unfair competition and an infringement of the WhatsApp Terms of Use.
In particular, WhatsApp considered that the development, promotion, operation and commercialisation of applications designed, among others, to use, automate, monitor, gather, and keep copies of WhatsApp users' profile picture, description, status, online time, draft messages, sent and received messages, deleted messages, voice and video calls amounts to an infringement of WhatsApp's intellectual property rights, an act of unfair competition and an infringement of the WhatsApp Terms of Use.
The Parties entered into a settlement agreement whereby Mobile Innovations, S.L. and Mr. Antonio José Calatrava Pérez committed to:
- cease and desist from developing, promoting, operating or commercialising any version of Wossip and have deleted any and all copies thereof;
- remove and disable from OwnSpy all of the functionalities relating to WhatsApp group applications, platforms, products, services, systems, servers or business (including without limitation Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus) (the "WhatsApp Group Business");
- cease and desist from using any of the trademarks relating to the WhatsApp Group Business or any other confusingly similar sign, including the use of the name Wossip; and
- pay a monetary penalty.
WhatsApp does not authorise the use of Wossip and any of the functionalities of OwnSpy relating to the WhatsApp Group Business, considering it an infringement of WhatsApp's intellectual property rights, an act of unfair competition and an infringement of the WhatsApp Terms of Use.