Founder of Facebook Accused of Theft

July 25th, 2007

A social-media battle is brewing in Boston this week. A U.S. District Court Judge in Beantown is expected to make a decision on whether to proceed with a lawsuit that alleges Faceook’s founder swiped trade secrets, source code, and intellectual property from his fellow Harvard University students.Judge Douglas P. Woodlock is hearing arguments on the Facebook founder’s motion to dismiss the case. The March lawsuit claims that Mark Zuckerberg, now Facebook’s CEO, was hired to develop a Web site for the Harvard students. That Web site was to be called ConnectU, an online social-networking site similar to Facebook. Zuckerberg promised to keep the plans a secret, but registered the Facebook.com domain name shortly after he began work on the ConnectU project, the court filings indicate.

Harvard students Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narenda are asking the court to shut down Facebook, give them control of the property, and award them profits from the popular social-networking site. Facebook has about 30 million members.

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