Facebook Paid $65 Million To Settle Suit Over Founding Of Site

Facebook appears to dished out 65 million to secretly settle a law suit claiming that founder Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for the wildly popular site from fellow Harvard classmates.

ConnectU founders Cameron Winklevoss, Divya Narendra and Tyler Winklevoss

ConnectU founders Tyler Winklevoss, Divya Narendra and Cameron Winklevoss

The news was reported by the law blog, the Recorder, which spotted an advertisement attorney Quinn Emanuel put on a law firm Web site touting the agreement.

The ad claims: “WON $65 million settlement against Facebook.”

The dispute began when Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra, founders of ConnectU, hired Zuckerberg to help develop a dating site for students. They sued in 2004 claiming Zuckerberg had used information from the project to start his own site.

Facebook initially agreed to settle the matter last year by buying ConnectU. Several months later, a federal judge in San Jose tossed out an appeal to reopen the settlement.

ConnectU had fired Emanuel and are battling over fees, with Emanuel seeking $13 million.

One Response to “Facebook Paid $65 Million To Settle Suit Over Founding Of Site”

  1. Affordable Electronics Says:

    Wow thats a large amount of money to give away.

    I’m sure that amount of money won’t affect Facebook too much too.

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