Facebook was ordered by a Milan-based appeals court to pay $4.7M in damages to an Italian developer for copying its ‘Nearby’ feature.

According to the ruling, Facebook copied the ‘Nearby’ feature from Italy’s Business Competence’s app ‘Faround.’ Faround was designed to help users find nearby places like shops, clubs, restaurants in their surrounding area using geolocalisation.

Business Competence filed a lawsuit in 2013, and a preliminary ruling was issued by the court in favour of the software developer in 2016; and it was made public in 2017, according to reports by the Reuters.

It was reported that the appeals court upheld a 2019 ruling, but raised the payment from the initial amount of 350,000 euros.

Facebook has received the court's decision and is currently examining it carefully before taking further action.