Winklevoss twins must accept Facebook deal, court rules
Zuckerberg wins battle against former Harvard classmates
San Francisco: Mark Zuckerberg won a legal battle against former Harvard classmates who accuse him of stealing their idea for Facebook, but the feud made famous on the silver screen is not over yet.
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss must accept a cash and stock settlement with Facebook that had been valued at $65 million (Dh238.71 million), a US appeals court ruled on Monday.
Urgency
Meanwhile, a New York man filed an amended lawsuit against Zuckerberg on Monday, citing a 2003 e-mail in which Zuckerberg discusses an urgent need to launch his site before "a couple of upperclassmen" could launch theirs, an apparent reference to the Winklevoss twins.
The Winklevoss brothers argued their settlement with Facebook was unfair because the company hid information from them during talks. But the twins were sophisticated negotiators aided by a team of lawyers, Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel.
"At some point, litigation must come to an end," Kozinski wrote. "That point has now been reached."
An attorney for the brothers, Jerome Falk Jr, said on Monday his clients would seek a rehearing before a larger, "en banc" group of Ninth Circuit judges.
That larger group can overrule a three-judge panel, although only a fraction of cases undergo such a review.
Should the Ninth Circuit refuse to re-hear the case, the last option would be an appeal to the US Supreme Court.
Falk said he "respectfully" disagreed with the Ninth Circuit's conclusions.
Olympians
The 1.96-metre Winkle-voss brothers are Olympic rowers who participated in the 2008 games in Beijing, and their saga with Zuckerberg was dramatized in the film The Social Network.
In the movie, actor Armie Hammer played both identical twins. Zuckerberg's character snidely called them on-screen the "Winklevi."
The twins, along with Divya Narendra, started a company called ConnectU while at Harvard. They say Zuckerberg stole their idea. Facebook denies these claims.
