{"id":432958,"date":"2025-12-08T09:34:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T09:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/432958\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T09:34:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T09:34:16","slug":"penn-marriage-pact-issues-cease-and-desist-to-penn-date-drop-alleging-plagiarized-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/432958\/","title":{"rendered":"Penn Marriage Pact issues cease and desist to Penn Date Drop, alleging plagiarized language"},"content":{"rendered":"

Penn Marriage Pact issued a cease and desist to the creators of Penn Date Drop, alleging that the new matchmaking service accessed years of internal Marriage Pact emails before launching its own product.<\/p>\n

As part of the proceedings, Penn Marriage Pact \u2014 an online matchmaking service \u2014 provided a list of exhibits showcasing the hundreds of emails it alleges Date Drop used to build its product. According to a document<\/a>, which was obtained by The Daily Pennsylvanian, select features and language in Date Drop\u2019s rollout this fall closely resembled previous emails sent by Penn Marriage Pact.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Penn Marriage Pact is an annual campus-wide matchmaking survey that promises to algorithmically pair students with their optimal romantic partner based on values, priorities, and relationship preferences. The questionnaire circulates every fall and uses email to maintain communication with participants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The most recent cycle, held this October, brought in almost 5,000 students \u2014 marking the service\u2019s fifth year <\/a>on campus.<\/p>\n

In a statement to the DP, Marriage Pact founder Liam McGregor alleged that reviews of the service\u2019s email logs revealed that Date Drop founder Henry Weng reopened dozens of Marriage Pact emails \u201cgoing back all four years\u201d in the month before releasing his service on Penn\u2019s campus.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Requests for comment were left with Weng and Date Drop co-creator Madhav Prakash.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the exhibits, Penn Marriage Pact disclosed screenshots of email logs alongside side-by-side comparisons of the two companies’ questionnaires, email designs, and privacy policy language.<\/p>\n

McGregor wrote that in addition to the questionnaire format and email templates, Date Drop\u2019s \u201csecret admirers\u201d feature appeared to borrow certain structures or phrasing from Marriage Pact materials.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He added that Date Drop\u2019s creators publicly marketed their service as \u201cMarriage Pact but weekly,\u201d referencing a widely circulated announcement on Stanford\u2019s Fizz and Penn\u2019s Sidechat \u2014 anonymous social media platforms for students.<\/p>\n

College junior and Penn Marriage Pact organizer Manasi Gajjalapurna wrote in a statement to the DP that Penn Marriage Pact has become<\/a> \u201cone of Penn\u2019s biggest traditions since 2021,\u201d describing it as the University\u2019s \u201cmarket for finding your optimal marital backup plan.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to Gajjalapurna, there have been 22,658 \u201cunique verified Penn undergraduate signups\u201d since 2017 \u2014 including 3,532 this year \u2014 and \u201c89% of undergrads do [Marriage Pact] during their four years here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of great things worth doing to create meaningful relationships on campus,\u201d McGregor wrote. \u201cWe\u2019d just prefer everyone do their own thing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penn Marriage Pact issued a cease and desist to the creators of Penn Date Drop, alleging that the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":432959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-432958","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-pa","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115683266735222293","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}