Tech Startup Diem Launches Lawsuit Against Facebook’s Rebranding

Tech startup DIEM plans on filing a cease and desist order against Facebook’s crypto project Diem which was formerly known as Libra so let’s find out more in today’s Libra news.

The Libra Association changed its name to Diem Association but there’s already a tech startup called DIEM and they are launching a lawsuit against Libra. It looks like someone at the association forgot to check if the name is already taken or maybe because It is a product of Facebook, they likely didn’t care. The London-based FinTech startup DIEM is now contemplating legal action against Diem Association for the use of the name according to the reports from European FinTech publication Sifted.

Diem Association is known as the Libra Association previously was the governing body for the blockchain-based Diem Network or Libra upon which stablecoins are tied to national currencies like the US dollar and they can be run on the network. Libra rebranded itself a week ago, saying that DIEM will denote a new day for the project. However, when Libra was launched it hit plenty of publicity back in June 2019 since it was created as a non-profit organization that was designed to govern Libra’s network and to integrate digital payments with the software offerings of Facebook like Whatsapp.

Things were quite hard for Libra since in one day back in 2019, partners like Stripe, Visa, EBay, and Mastercard all bailed out due to regulatory issues. The tech startup DIEM uses an algorithm to price customers’ items so all of them can sell things to DIEM and get cash. The founder of the platform Geri Cupi said:

“As a small startup, we are concerned that customer confusion resulting from Libra’s actions will significantly impact our growth.”

Chris Adelsbach, a major investor in the startup, didn’t have a seed round yet and said to Sifted:

 “It wouldn’t have taken that much effort for Facebook to find out if there’s another Diem in financial services… They obviously took the view that ‘we can just crush them, we’re Facebook.’”

The startup now plans on filing a cease and desist order with either Facebook or the Association itself. As reported previously, Facebook shook the world last year when it announced the plans to launch a digital currency named Libra. However, the social media giant’s efforts were crashed after the regulators of the world denied it and were worried about the implications so they decided to blowback the project. Facebook didn’t give up on the idea so they decided they should rebrand the products.