It seems to be a sad fact of business life that if you suddenly make a ton of money, people will crawl out of the woodwork trying to take that money away through various forms of litigation. Facebook’s famously meteoric rise seems to have stirred more than its fair share of lawyered-up pretenders to the Zuckerberg crown, most notably the Winklevoss twins – who claim the Facebook CEO stole their idea and ran with it.
Having settled for $65 million in cash and shares – now worth around $100 million – the Winklevoss twins decided they earlier this year wanted some more of the Facebook pie, so filed another suit. Late Tuesday that suit was thrown out by Judge Alex Kozinski, who commented: “At some point, litigation must come to an end, that point has now been reached.”
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss appear to not agree. They’ve filed an appeal, although we can’t imagine their chances are very good.
But, when god closes a door, as they say, he opens a window. And through that window is leaping one Paul Ceglia with a claim to ownership of half Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune. Ceglia had filed a similar suit last year, but it was quickly dismissed as fantasy given his criminal background and the audacity of his claims. This time, however, he’s done his homework and has produced a tranche of e-mails and contracts between himself and Zuckerberg which seemingly show the Facebook impresario lying to Ceglia about the site’s success in order to get out of a deal the two were involved in which gave Ceglia a 50% stake in the project.
Facebook, for their part, are calling the new evidence forgeries, labelling Ceglia a “scam artist,” and as Silicon Alley Insider notes, will most likely file a motion to dismiss the suit. If this is denied then things become interesting, and money will be put on the table.
The phrase “out of the frying pan, into the fire.” seems appropriate here.
