Winklevoss Twins To Continue Fighting Facebook
An anonymous reader writes "Facebook's longest legal saga, which has lasted seven years so far, looked like it was finally closed, but that was just a false alarm. In a filing earlier this week with the federal court in San Francisco, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's former Harvard classmates Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, who accuse him of stealing their idea for the social network, decided not to seek US Supreme Court review of the $65 million settlement made in 2008. Everyone thought this meant they had finally given up. It turns out that the twins have decided to keep fighting after all, just with a different lawsuit."
Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational lawyer station
No Love
Emperor Zuckerberg
No, really, I'm expecting something like this. They got away with 65million already.
It's a failure of settlement they were allowed to sue again and keep the settlement
Now really I'm rooting for Mark to wipe the floor with them.
how long until
Can't they just be happy with what they've already won and go home?
These guys are so money hungry, they should work for the RIAA
Seriously how did he steal their idea? When they came up with it, they couldn't have gotten it off the ground then? Did he beat them in building the site first? They couldn't have created their idea still? This seems frivolous to me. It's not like he stole their idea for a physical object and then patented the idea so they could never make it.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
65 Million ought to be enough for ANYBODY!!
Willie...
Why does anyone seem to care?
These two geniuses are really identical morons. They should have had him sign a non-disclosure/non-compete agreement acknowledging the intellectual property they think they had. We would not be even discussing this now.
Furthermore, we have to acknowledge ideas grow and change; their original idea may have been similar to whatever Mark created, but it changed as soon as he started working on it. Sometimes we call these changes changes, or scope creep, or just evolution. But they always change, especially when somebody knew enters the process.
no comment
...if only because of the endless puerile mirth to be obtained from a social networking site called "Winklebook".
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
After all, their lawyers are the only ones with something to gain in this case.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Seriously, after this long of being a thorn its time to put them out of the picture. Especially since they were offered more money to go away than they could ever figure out what to do with.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Winklevoi" would be better, since -os is the Greek masculine singular ending, and -us is the Latin equivalent.
Seriously, these two gentlemen are the laughing stock of the technology industry
I don't think that really is a concern of them, all they are worried about is taking as much money as they can from mark's work as they can. ( even if it was their idea, he did the work and took the risks.. not them )
But i do agree, regardless if they are right or wrong they look petty and stupid and should take what was offered and go home. If they are all that great, they will take that 65mil and turn it around and put mark out of business with a better idea.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What the hell are you babbling about? They DID act on THEIR idea by hiring Zuckerburg, who decided to take the idea and run with it himself while pretending to work on the same project for the twins. Unless you consider deception and theft to be technical creativity, how the hell is Zuckerburg the good guy here?
This seems like incompetent negotiations on the part of Zuck. The whole point of giving them $65M is that the twins go away and don't bother him again. There should be a clause that specifies "no more lawsuits".
Seriously, these two gentlemen are the laughing stock of the technology industry. I'd wager though that no one would say that to either of their identical faces; but isn't it worse knowing that no matter where you go your back is known as belonging to one of the leeches attempting to feed upon the technical creativity of other people?
Well, I'm sure that they'd claim that Zuckerberg was the one who'd leached off them. Might be true, might not. And I doubt they care about your exaggerated perception that they're a supposed "laughing stock" in the industry.
From what I've heard of the Winklevosses, they sound like a pair of overprivileged spoiled douchebags and on one level I'd be quite happy to see them go down in flames. But then I don't much like Zuckerberg either, and if he *did* rip off their idea, I wouldn't want to see him get away with that on principle.
Generally, I agree with the other guy who said that it's two sets of tossers with lots of money playing the legal games of the privileged. The best outcome would be for Facebook to go bankrupt (not going to happen, but whatever...!), the creepy twins get nothing more and every shred of information relating to the privacy-contemptious Zuckerberg's personal affairs leaked and sold to the highest bidder.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Does this mean we'll have a sequel for The Social Network?
The Winklevoss twins offer no contract, no NDA and no reason not to work for a competitor. They had nothing to stop him from stealing their ideas. Ideas aren't copyrightable. They're easy to come up with. It's execution that matters.
Now these guys had money, or at least access to money. The could easily have hired a coder, full time, got a site together in a month. Maybe nothing amazing but it would have done the job, and been first to market and that's what's important.
They made a bad Business decision. Zuckerberg took advantage of this bad business decision. That's the world of business for you.
The Palin Hacker did far less than this, yet he's facing hard time in the federal pen; this case shouldn't be in the civil courts - it ought to be playing out in the CRIMINAL court system:
...At one point, Mark appears to have exploited a flaw in ConnectU's account verification process to create a fake Cameron Winklevoss account with a fake Harvard.edu email address.
How Mark Zuckerberg Hacked Into Rival ConnectU In 2004
Mar. 5, 2010
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-mark-zuckerberg-hacked-connectu-2010-3
In this new, fake profile, he listed Cameron's height as 7'4", his hair color as "Ayran Blond," and his eye color as "Sky Blue." He listed Cameron's "language" as "WASP-y."
Next, Mark appears to have logged into the accounts of some ConnectU users and changed their privacy settings to invisible. The idea here was apparently to make it harder for people to find friends on ConnectU, thus reducing its utility. Eventually, Mark appears to have gone a step further, deactivating about 20 ConnectU accounts entirely...
Zuckerberg is a psychopath - the specter of him being one of the wealthiest [and most powerful] people on the planet ought to send a chill down your spine.
He isn't. What Zuckerberg is more bloody-minded and clever. In the world of business that means he wins. This isn't a good guy-bad guy scenario, it's about who had more acumen, daring and sheer desire to conquer, and Zuckerberg, being the antisocial hateful misfit that he is, has what it takes.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That's just pure greed IMO.
Seriously, that amount is around what, 50-60 times what the average north-american worker will earn in his *whole life*...
(Why anyone would even *need* more than that is beyond me.)
Even after taxes and everything, let's say even 20M $, just the interests on that will allow anyone to never worry about being able to afford something. Heck, just gimme 1M , and I'm retiring at 40...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
" Everyone thought this meant they had finally given up. It turns out that the twins have decided to keep fighting after all, just with a different lawsuit." " Should be..." Everyone thought this meant the winklevoss's had given up, it turns out that the twins have deicded to keep fighting suckerberg after all, in a different lawsuit." Or something like that...