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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?"
Until it became massively profitable, why sue? The idea of a lawsuit is to get damages. As long as you do not pass the statute of limitations, waiting is not counted against you.
from the article For the last three years, lawyers for the two sides have waged an increasingly contentious - though largely unnoticed - court battle.
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
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.
> This case has teeth.
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.
A.
OK, I realise that people aren't being paid to submit their stories but surely the editors are being paid to edit them?
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 : 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 : 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' : Ridiculous story that takes quotes out of context to sensationalise the issue.
Gigabyte N680SLI-DQ6 - A Mother Of A Motherboard : At last! A motherboard with three full-length PCI Express x16 slots! Except it only has two.
CEO Questionably Used Pseudonym to Post Online : 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 : 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?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I haven't read the article, and I don't plan to and I have no particular interest in Facebook ... but this smacks of sour grapes. Okay ... he took their idea. So what? Ideas are cheap, one in a hundred thousand ever becomes anything worthwhile, and if you have a good idea and you give it away you're an idiot. You're especially stupid if you give it to someone who is better at execution than you are and don't have a formal agreement (granted, contracts are only as good as the people who sign them, but without one you're gonna have a much harder time in court.)
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.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I hope this ends setting some kind of precedent, where lawyers everywhere are forced to reference the Winklevoss-Zuckerberg case with a straight face.
Facebook then filed a terse countersuit in California federal court, accusing ConnectU of tort violations and unfair business practices.
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...