Facebook sued a South Korean company accused of illegally using data to sell marketing and advertising.
Social networks ask judges to force Rankwave to audit the company's business to see if user data is obtained and sold.
A source on Facebook told the BBC that he could not say how much data or how many users could be affected.
The network said the initiative "will send a message to developers that Facebook really wants to enforce our rules."
"Facebook is investigating the practice of Rankwave data in connection with its advertising and marketing services," said Jessica Romero, director of the Facebook implementation platform.
"Rankwave has not been able to work with our efforts to verify compliance with our policies, which we request from all developers who use our platform."
The BBC cannot contact Rankwave to comment on Friday.
User message tracking
According to court documents filed Friday in California, Facebook accused Rankwave of using at least 30 different applications to "track and analyze" comments and "like" on the Facebook page.
Rankwave also offers applications for consumers who, after obtaining user approval, continue the popularity of their publications. This application will calculate "social influence scores," Facebook said.
However, social networking reports have information that since 2014 Rankwave has used data collected by the application "for its own commercial purposes, including the provision of consulting services for advertisers and marketing companies."
In its lawsuit, Facebook accused Rankwave of ignoring repeated requests to open audits and provide evidence of data allegedly obtained.
Facebook wants the judge to force Rankwave to take these steps and pay the amount of unspecified damage. Facebook said the data company had damaged its "reputation" and "public trust".
Facebook said it began investigating Rankwave, which remained active on the network until last month, in June 2018.
"We need new internet rules"
This case can make a comparison with Cambridge Analytica, a data analysis company based in the UK that misuses Facebook's personal data to inform its political campaign efforts. The discovery of the incident plunged Facebook into a crisis.
On Friday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris to discuss the potential for social media regulation.
"We need new rules for the Internet that define business and government responsibilities," Zuckerberg told France 2 after the meeting.
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