Facebook is said to be finalizing a settlement with founders of ConnectU, according to sources quoted by the NY Times.
For those unfamiliar with the case, a lawsuit before the US Federal Court alleged that Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg stole the original code for Facebook. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra (ConnectU) accused Zuckerberg of stealing the source code, design, and business plan for Facebook in 2003 when he worked in the Harvard dorms as a programmer for their own tertiary education focused social-networking site HarvardConnect.com, now known as ConnectU.
News of a settlement comes as a surprise given the case to date hadn’t been going well for ConnectU. The press conference ConnectU held in July 2007 was farcical, and the company was given two weeks to revise their complaint or have it thrown out. The next court appearance for the company was at Facebook’s counter case that claimed that ConnectU illegally hacked into Facebook in 2004, stole email addresses then used those addresses to attempt to entice Facebook users to sign up to ConnectU.
According to the NY Times, terms of the settlement have not been disclosed but in the meantime all motions in the case against ConnectU have been terminated.
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CrunchBase Information
Facebook
Website:
facebook.com
Location:
Palo Alto, California, United States
Founded:
February 1, 2004
Funding:
$378M
On February 4th, 2004 Mark Zuckerberg launched The Facebook, a social network that was at the time exclusively for Harvard students. It was a huge hit, in 2 weeks, half of the student body… Learn More
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