StudiVZ, the most popular social networking site in Germany, has 10 million regular users and also is the most popular networking site in German.  Even though Facebook has a German language web site, it has had a hard time trying to get new users due to sites like StudiVZ and others.  The English Facebook web site reportedly has as many as 80 million users spread across the world.

Facebook claims the slight changes were "nominal" and the German site simply replaced "Facebook's blue color scheme with a red one."  Also in the lawsuit, the German site also copied the Facebook wall, groups, friend feed, and other features used in Facebook.

A quick glimpse of the web site does reveal that even from the sign-up page onward, it is almost 100 percent identical to the English version Facebook web site, except in a different color.

Facebook could launch lawsuits to stop at least nine other Facebook clone web sites to get shut down, with Xiaonei, operating in China, likely Facebook's next target.  Xiaonei closely mimics Facebook and its user interface, and is the most popular social networking site in China.

The attorneys for Facebook have been busy as of late, after the site and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, recently completed an intellectual property dispute that accused Zuckerberg of stealing the site's design from classmates at Harvard University.  The founders behind the ConnectU social networking web site, which never really picked up users like Facebook, said Zuckerberg stole the idea for social networking from ConnectU after being hired to write code for the site.

With that legal matter closed, it's likely Facebook has set its sights back on a global expansion, attempting to launch web sites native to specific nations and regions.