It seems the $65 million settlement reached between Facebook and the founders of ConnectU over the ownership battle of Facebook is not a closed chapter. ConnectU is a Social Networking website launched by Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra, ex-classmates of facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
The battle is taking a new turn with Winklevoss twin brothers claiming that they are entitled to a much larger amount, since Facebook’s CEO had misled them about the share value of Facebook and has committed securities fraud. The legal papers were filed at a United States District Court for Northern District of California.
The original case against Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook was filed in 2004 by Divya Narendra along with twins Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss, the team behind the Social networking site ConnectU. The original case says that Zuckerberg who was hired by the trio to write some code for their website, had stolen their idea and launched Facebook.com.
The story goes like this.
In 2002, The Winklevoss twins who attended Harvard University with Mark Zuckerberg, had started a social networking site called HarvardConnection. Later Zuckerberg joined the team as a programmer by entering into an oral contract with the twins and their partner, Divya Narendra.
Over the next two months, Zuckerberg began creating a social networking site of his own called “thefacebook.com”. On February 4, he officially launched thefacebook.com. Two days later, the Winklevosses had learned about the new site.
Later in 2004, ConnectU, which was HarvardConnection’s new name, filed a lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly stealing the idea of ConnectU and for breaking oral contract.
Now, even after winning a $65 million settlement in 2008, the twins believe they are entitled to more after a friend allegedly lied about the value of the company. The twins have demanded an unspecified amount of additional money. They also claim that Zuckerberg has committed securities fraud. The legal papers were filed at the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, and the case “threatens to end in ‘scorched Earth’ litigation” if it ends up going before a judge.
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