Facebook Lawsuit To Come To End

Facebook.com founder Mark E. Zuckerberg will soon shake a lawsuit that has dogged his multi-billion dolllar social networking site since its inception in a Kirkland House dorm room, according to the New York Times.

The Times reported yesterday that Facebook and ConnectU—a similar site launched by three Harvard graduates who allege that Zuckerberg stole the concept after working for them—will soon settle their competing law suits.

Neither Facebook, ConnectU, nor Facebook’s attorneys returned requests for comment yesterday.

A lawyer representing ConnectU declined to comment.

According to the Times, “a person briefed on the status of the dueling lawsuits” said a settlement was expected within weeks.

In Sept. 2004, ConnectU’s founders sued Facebook and Zuckerberg after first petitioning for a hearing with the College’s Administrative Board and a personal audience with then-University President Lawrence H. Summers. They alleged that Zuckerberg, whom they hired in 2003 to help set up their social networking site, had breached his contract and defrauded them.

ConnectU had a lackluster launch four months before, in large part due to Facebook’s successful saturation of the market after it started at Harvard in Feb. 2004.

“He’d become a partner if we’d enter into a corporate agreement, and he’d be able to reap any benefits from the site,” ConnectU co-founder Cameron S. H. Winklevoss ’04 told The Crimson in May of 2003. “It wasn’t as if we told him to build this site and then would have said good-bye, get out...He never asked for compensation, but we would have been happy to pay for his services.”

Facebook later responded to ConnectU’s founders, Divya K. Narendra ’04, Cameron Winklevoss and his brother Tyler O. H. Winklevoss ’04, by counter-suing for unfair business practices.

Zuckerberg said in 2004 that his participation in ConnectU’s development was “informal”—that he contributed less than a day’s work and quit when the project yielded few appreciable results.

In 2005, ConnectU subpoenaed The Crimson for all materials related to the newspaper’s reporting on the two companies as part of its lawsuit.

The Crimson refused to comply with the subpoenas because it said compliance would compromise the newspaper’s independent role and because the sought-for information was available elsewhere and not central to the dispute.

Since the dispute began on Harvard’s campus, Facebook’s revenues and user ship have skyrocketed. The site boasts 69 million active users, intense use by college-age consumers, and a market value that Microsoft has estimated at $15 billion.

—Aparicio J. Davis contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Clifford M. Marks can be reached at cmarks@fas.harvard.edu.