Facebook In Court 129
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?"
Why wait (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why wait (Score:5, Informative)
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"Winning is nothing.
Collecting is everything."
A law suit is either about being pissed off and trying to slap someone or it is about money.
The first one can be satisfying but there is something very 'school yard justice' about it.
The second one is business. (Maybe not good business but it is still business.)
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That sounds very suspiciously like these guys [cookcollec...orneys.com]. They're representing the Goldman family in their efforts to collect from the Butcher of Brentwood. Admirable, but they've also carried water for the Cult^W Church of $cientology, which could be liberally described as morally questionable.
---==[MoD]==[ParenT]==[UP]==--- (Score:1, Funny)
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On March 28, . . . a Massachusetts judge threw out the original lawsuit on a technicality.
A ruling based on a technicality is hardly a dismissal...
Re:Why wait (Score:4, Interesting)
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Not necessarily. The statute of limitations is a "technicality;" so is the matter of jurisdiction. If the plaintiff failed to file suit in time or couldn't establish that the court had jurisdiction over the defendant, he'd be cooked.
Re:Why wait (Score:5, Insightful)
It's going to court, the submitter is not the judge or jury, and the comment space is the proper venue for opinions - not the summary.
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Slashdot is not a pure news site per se, it's a site supported by and contributed to by its members. It doesn't have to follow the same rules as "real" news sites, and this is a good thing. When I read the original post it made me say, "oh yeah, why did they wait so long?". If that hadn't been in the post I never would have gone into these comments.
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you wonder why they waited this long.. (Score:5, Informative)
from the article
Editors, please edit! (Score:5, Insightful)
Shouldn't they at least be reading the submissions (titles and story) and then any linked articles as well to make sure that they've been accurately summarised (not to mention relevant)?
It seems the Firehose is catching most dupes (we get the occasional one but not 2-4 a day as we did a couple of years back) but typos, innacurate headlines, poorly worded summaries and even innacurate stories (such as this one) still abound.
Just looking at the current frontpage, I can see several stories that either have titles or summaries that need editing:
Facebook in Court [slashdot.org] : the summary, which fails to tell us that the legal fight has been going on for years, and implies that it's only been started now because of greed.
Gadgets Have Taken Over For Our Brains [slashdot.org] : the summary, which references Trinity College, but not which Trinity College. Is it the one in London, Cambridge, Washington DC, Toronto, Carmarthen, Florida, Melbourne...? No, it's the one in Dublin? So tell us.
Linux Creator Calls GPLv3 Authors 'Hypocrites' [slashdot.org] : Ridiculous story that takes quotes out of context to sensationalise the issue.
Gigabyte N680SLI-DQ6 - A Mother Of A Motherboard [slashdot.org] : At last! A motherboard with three full-length PCI Express x16 slots! Except it only has two.
CEO Questionably Used Pseudonym to Post Online [slashdot.org] : An ambiguous if not misleading headline. Read the comments for more, but one thing that's not in question is that he used a pseudonym.
One Laptop Per Child and Intel Join Forces [slashdot.org] : Another ambiguous title, which seems to imply a joint venture. As Intel has joined the OLPC project it would have been more accurate for the title to simply say "Intel joins OLPC Project".
Call me a pedant if you want to but there are editors for a reason, so they should edit. Their job isn't that hard, and now they even have people looking at the Firehose helping them out, so why are we still getting so many poor or poorly-presented stories?
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That's all very well, but which Cambridge? Is it the one in England or Massachusetts?
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It's just sad that they take such little care and pride in their own project.
Re:Editors, please edit! (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that's because most people come here for the discussion, rather than the articles. Slashdot only posts around 10 articles a day, out of hundreds of possible stories. Many of these are so late that they are no longer topical. After a while, I started regarding the article as just a general topic; something akin to the subject in a chat room, which may be followed or ignored. Many of the most interesting threads here are wildly off-topic.
In short: We don't care about TFA, why should the editors?
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But seriously: if editors just spent 2 minutes per story (checking the summary, doing a search on their site, etc.), then we'd get rid of most of the duplicates and assorted crap.
RTFA! (Score:2)
Bzzt! Wrong! It does have three full-length (i.e., physically x16) slots. It's just that one of them is electrically x8. So it is full-length, and you can plug an x16 card into it, but it's just slower than the other two slots.
Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not trying to defend the incompetent editors. But if you're going to complain about other people not getti
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By the way, I think you mangled the quoted section in your post a bit.
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Not four years, suit filed 2003 (Score:5, Informative)
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of course, sue now (Score:2, Interesting)
Because suing isn't about moral properness, suing is a business decision. You sue to profit. That's why you sue for money instead of, say, a sincere apology. Everyone's had business ideas and get-rich schemes stolen, you only sue if someone actually manages to succeed with your half-baked never-completed plan.
(Put me in the school of "it's not the idea or the code, it's the execution plus luck that creates success" school of thought.)
'Apolo
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This case has teeth.
Re:of course, sue now (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm... IANAL, but the Crimson article is replent with indication that Zuckerberg was not part of their business-- "he never asked for compensation", "we would have been happy to pay for his services.", "his was not a paid position".
A contract is an offer plus an acceptance plus renumeration. Without renumeration, there's not as many teeth as one might think.
Key is "neither camp went so far as to label the partnership contractually binding." This could be in the same category as non-competes, i.e. can you limit what someone does in the future just because they worked with you in the past. And without compensation, the 'work' part is kinda iffy, more like 'talked with' or 'stopped by'.
This is where ethics (did Zuckerberg screw them over) divides with business (did Zuckerberg do something illegal). Law is murky there. Answer hazy, check again later.
Re:of course, sue now (Score:5, Interesting)
If I look over your garden fence and see that you're building a giant widget and then you notice and offer me a tour of your giant widget do you have any legal recourse if I decide that I like the idea of having my own giant widget and then make one for myself?
My gut instinct in that scenario is that you're screwed, unless you got any form of agreement from me before you showed me it. No agreement, no case.
Is my copying your idea without at least getting your permission ethical? I'd say no but others would disagree. Is it legal? Well, if you didn't get me to sign anything then, unfortunately for you, the answer is probably yes.
Re:of course, sue now (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, if the guy stole their source code, that would be different. It still wouldn't be a matter "turning over the company" but it might be worth some damages. Odds are any code he ripped off isn't in service anymore anyway.
I've been through a few small business ventures (none of them made me millions, alas) and if there's one thing you learn early on it's a. find people that you trust and b. keep your trap shut. The worst enemy of a fledgling business is anyone or anything who will take what's been developed and clone it for their own profit. Secrecy is your best weapon, and until your product or service is launched and everyone knows about it, the most important secret is the central product idea itself.
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>> Okay
--> Yes, an idiot. But still an idiot backed by law if any NDA/Non-compete agreements were signed (article does not discuss)
>> You're especially stupid if you
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From the article it was all oral and the Facebook person was working for free. Probably why the litigation has taken so long, since if it was written down who owned what this would be sorted out right quick like. As such it's devolved into a he/she said sort of argument with all the details are murkey.
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It sounds like you might have just deduced why legal constructs like 'patents' exist in many countries
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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 s
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btw, you don't even have to use the circle-c symbol anymore, but it's a good idea to remin
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I can also say that hardly anyone actually cares. Competition, he won. We only pretend to be less cutthroat than other schools.
let them do all the hard work (Score:3, Insightful)
Then you come in and steal the fruits of their labors. Because the way they developed it and did it is not the way you would have done it.
and their way worked.
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lack of diversity among parties = someone vandalized wikipedia.
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individuals I believe I'm required to file in federal court. However, if it's a bunch of people in one state suing one guy in another state you're
required to use state courts.
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sry, couldn't help it.
Re:You'd expect the poster to have read the articl (Score:5, Interesting)
Facebook went a step beyond just that, they are also suing the programmers that worked for ConnectU at the time. I am now looking at having to pay a potential $25,000 if Facebook wins because I coded for ConnectU, simply because of this countersuit. Talk about unethical lawsuits...
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Difficult to check up on; not worth the bother. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Except a large portion of his assets; including facebook.com, which was even then a very valuable property. Do you understand bankruptcy law at all (you certainly can't spell it)?
Could be a lot of reasons (Score:2)
Perhaps it doesn't matter why they waited, if the guy stole the code from them.
Musta only stole the good bits (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Musta only stole the good bits (Score:4, Interesting)
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they still deserve to get paid if someone ripped of their source code (if that is what happened). And just because the student codes get paid $5.15/hour does not mean the theif that made millions with the stolen code should only pay them $5.15
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All in all, both of them are 1000 x better than myspace.
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Hah, kinda ironic there. I had NoScript installed and forgot to enable Facebook but I go no warnings so I didn't know what was up, realized it was NoScript and emailed them and suggested they add a JavaScript not enabled warning . . . makes me tingle inside but I know it's probably just a coincidence.
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Re:why wait four years? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Also, since apparently there were emails floating around about the matter, its legally obvous he knew about the potiental infraction.
Sure, its not always black and white, but if you can prove a person knew about it long before they acted, they lose their rights. If you cant prove it, then the 'time limit' doesnt apply, since i do agree you cant be everywhere at o
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Neither of us are lawyers. While this is somewhat true in the case of real estate [wikipedia.org] or trademarks, it's not a general rule.
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Serendipity ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Facebook COUNTERSUED! (Score:4, Interesting)
However, it seems like Facebook's suit is more of a leverage to get the first case dismissed. Facebook is saying ConnectU damaged them somehow, but when asked, Facebook said they couldn't identify what the damages were. This is from a company worth billions, and rejected a $1 billion buy out offer.
And the defendent list includes new people, Winston Williams, Pacific Northwest Software, Wayne Chang, David Gucwa.
Let the battle of the titans begin!
Shutdown face book? (Score:5, Insightful)
You would have an agrngy horde on your hands very quickly.
Google and Facebook (Score:1)
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http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9741016-7.html [com.com]
precedent (Score:5, Funny)
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doesn't look the same (Score:2)
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Why wait? (Score:1)
not a new thing (Score:1)
They didn't wait years to sue, they knew about the problem almost from day 1 and definitely spoke up about it. Whether the theft actually happened, or they just imagined it did, is another matter altogether.
Napster (Score:1)
same simple idea, not business (Score:2, Insightful)
But thats not the merit. The difficult thing is turning that simple idea and design into something useful and into a profitable business. When I first heard of facebook i just thought it was one more of those pages i dont want to know
FaceBoock suit delay. (Score:1)
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Did you not even read the summary: "... stealing the source code, design, and business plan
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Please remember Rule of Slashdot #17, "All lawsuits are frivolous, unless they're against Microsoft."
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