Facebook In Court

ScaredOfTheMan writes "'The lawsuit, filed by brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, accuses Zuckerberg, Facebook's 23-year-old C.E.O, of stealing the source code, design, and business plan for Facebook in 2003 when he briefly worked in the Harvard dorms as a programmer for their own fledgling social-networking site, now known as ConnectU. The plaintiffs have demanded that Facebook be shut down and that full control of the site — and its profits — be turned over to them.' I just wonder why they waited so long to sue? If he really stole their idea in 2003, why wait four years?"

you wonder why they waited this long..

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like the poster did a very bad job of reading the original article..

from the article

For the last three years, lawyers for the two sides have waged an increasingly contentious - though largely unnoticed - court battle.

Not four years, suit filed 2003

[Anonymous Coward]

The lawsuit was filed in 2003 actually. This has been an on-going battle for years. There is merit to this case. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=connectu+face book [google.com]

Re:Why wait

[pringlis]

They actually originally filed in 2004 but it was dismissed. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=503336 [thecrimson.com] has details

Difficult to check up on; not worth the bother.

[Anonymous Coward]

A) there's no point suing someone who has no money. Did you expect them to do it when he was in massive debt? He'd just declare bankrupcy, close the company and they'd get nothing.

B) to get full damages you normally have to try to resolve things equitably without the court. It probably takes a long time to prove he wasn't cooperating.

C) when you start suing, you have to be sure of your case. That means you have to get witnesses together and proof of your right to whatever you are suing over. He says / she says is not a good thing to risk the cost of an American lawsuit over.

Now I'm not saying they are right (I don't know and you also don't know) or have a moral right to this, but the reasons are pretty obvious.

Re:of course, sue now

[happyemoticon]

I'm not a lawyer, but the NDA/No-Comp angle is enlightening as to exactly why businesses are so meticulous about having people sign such clauses or contracts. This very fact indicates that actually nailing someone on these grounds is difficult.

1) Business plan/"Idea": Seems to me this would be classified as a trade secret. However, they did not attempt to protect themselves via contract. If you just told this guy, who might as well be your mother-in-law, a reporter or John Doe off the street, it's not a secret anymore.

You might also take a patent angle in these times when everything can be patented, but since these guys are in college, I'm going to guess that they didn't apply for a patent.

2) Design: The rough idea of how things fit together. This, I would say, is precisely what patents were intended for, and again, since they're geeks, not lawyers, and no materials I've read thus far have mentioned patent infringement, I'm going to guess they don't have a patent. Therefore, they don't have a case.

3) Code: I followed the SCO v IBM litigation for a few years, then I got bored. Clearly the law has a bit of catching up to do, still, because while it would seem obvious to search for identical code, it took years to get to the point where SCO would say what actually infringed.

Their case then amounts to "They stole our code!" which has been established as a pretty murky area as far as the law is concerned.

Re:Google and Facebook

[pmac2322]

Yahoo put a bid in, I believe, at $1B, but Facebook demanded $2B, and they are now considering an IPO, which would be the "first big IPO of web 2.0"

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9741016-7.html [com.com]

Re:of course, sue now

[hamelis]

Having recently graduated from the (not so) illustrious institution from which this case originates.. I can safely say that anyone who was around at the time and paid attention knows Zuckerberg essentially stole the idea. As the parent poster says, the legalities of that reality are something else.

I can also say that hardly anyone actually cares. Competition, he won. We only pretend to be less cutthroat than other schools.

Re:You'd expect the poster to have read the articl

[Anonymous Coward]

Get yourself a lawyer obviously, if you were being paid as an employee and had no way of knowing you were doing anything illegal (or what they are accusing you of doing was illegal anyways) you should not be liable for anything. If you were a "partner" in the business, you're fucked and this is why they created the S class corporation; limited liability for smaller businesses.

Re:precedent

[kumanopuusan]

I hope this ends setting some kind of precedent, where lawyers everywhere are forced to reference the Winklevoss-Zuckerberg case with a straight face.

You've obviously never heard of my favorite Supreme Court case, United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries [wikipedia.org].