Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had a victory of sorts this week when a court ruled that the Winkelvoss twins, who claim that Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for a social networking site, would have to stick with the original deal they had struck with Facebook. Their lawsuit was immortalized in the film The Social Network.
But Zuckerberg is not out of the woods yet with businessman Paul Ceglia who claims to have produced new evidence in his case against Facebook. Ceglia last year filed a lawsuit claiming that Zuckerberg had signed a contract in 2003 that awarded Ceglia $1,000 and a 50-percent stake in the fledgeling social network. As part of the deal, Ceglia claimed he had worked as a designer and developer on Zuckerberg's site, while Zuckerberg worked as a coder for Ceglia's StreetFax.com.
Now Computerworld reports that Ceglia has amended his lawsuit for a stake in the site which, at last estimate, is worth $85 billion.
Ceglia is basing his claim on some purportedly incriminating emails. BusinessInsider has got hold of them. In one of them, written in September 2003, Zuckerberg canvasses some revenue models with Ceglia including charging Harvard alumni $29.95 a month. In a more damning one, written in January 2004, Zuckerberg says: "Paul, I have a rather serious issue to discuss with you, according to our contract I owe you over 30% more of the business which would give you over 80% of the company."
That comes out to 50% and if the emails are legitimate, it might force Zuckerberg to settle. Even for a fraction of $85 billion.
Farhad Manjoo has a strong piece in Slate stating: Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook, get over it. " He makes the point that while Zuckerberg might not have invented social networking, he certainly did it better than anyone else. "Facebook is worth billions only because the company has doggedly outmaneuvered all rivals by building products that everyone wants to use. And it did so only because Mark Zuckerberg was there to make that happen. Social networking may not have been his idea. But there's nobody else who deserves more credit for it."
But in the end, the outcome will depend on how the court treats those emails.
no comment untill now