The Twins Lose to Facebook, Now They Can Focus on London 2012

Posted by at 12:56 pm on April 11, 2011

Today real life has proven the The Social Network wrong. In the movie Winklevosses get to walk away with a settlement worth $65 million.  Back here in the the real world, the Winklevosses appealed and litigated for three more years. But now it’s truly over, and the results are no surprise—Facebook won.

The Winklevosses and their partner, Divya Narendra, originally sued Facebook back in 2004, claiming founder Mark Zuckerberg stole their ideas and lied to them when he created Facebook while a student at Harvard. Eventually, a settlement was reached in 2008; the Winklevosses signed off with the aid of  big-firm lawyers. It was a mixture of cash and Facebook stock valued at the time as $65 million—today it’s worth well over $100 million.

In a statement Monday, Facebook’s deputy general counsel, Colin Stretch, said: “We appreciate the 9th Circuit’s careful consideration of this case and are pleased the court has ruled in Facebook’s favor.”

In the opinion from Chief Judge Alex Kozinski who wrote for the three-judge panel, he said: “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. And the courts might have obliged, had the Winklevosses not settled their dispute and signed a release of all claims against Facebook.”

He concluded: “At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached.”

The twins in the rowing world are known as Olympians who placed sixth in the pairs in Beijing in 2008. Cameron and Tyler have their sights set on London in 2012.

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