Yesterday, Judge Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, affirmed a lower court ruling saying the twins could not unwind a settlement they signed in 2008 over the creation of Facebook.
In the April 11th article money.cnn.com, “Judge kills zombie Winklevoss lawsuit against Facebook”, Kozinski was quoted as saying: “At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached.”
Originally, the twins, Cameron and Tyler, also known as the “the Winklevii” and Divya Narendra filed a lawsuit in 2004 against Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The three alleged Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from them. All were former Harvard classmates.
The idea that Zuckerberg stole the idea was the plot of last year’s popular movie The Social Network.
Facebook countersued the three and the social networking site they’d created, ConnectU, on the grounds they’d hacked into Facebook to steal data and spam users.
The legal drama went on until 2008. At that point, the Winklevosses and Narendra signed a $65 million settlement, part of which was in cash and part in Facebook stock.
However, after the fact, the Winklevii and Divya tried to renege on the deal, on the grounds that Facebook had misrepresented its stock value. Even after a judge ruled against them and forced the settlement to go through, the three took the case to court.
Kozinski also wrote, as part of his ruling: “The Winklevosses are not the first parties bested by a competitor who then seek to gain through litigation what they were unable to achieve in the marketplace.”