ConnectU founders Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss (brothers), and Divya Narendra started developing their own social networking site in December 2002, while they were Harvard University students.
Later in November 2003 they asked Zuckerberg to help them with software and database. They were asking him to complete work as soon as possible, and Zuckerberg was assuring he was working hard to complete it. In June 2004 they all graduated, but the site still was not done.
"Such statements were false and Zuckerberg never intended to provide the code and instead intended to breach his promise ... and intended to steal the idea for the Harvard Connection website, and in fact he did so," says the suit.
While slowing ConnectU software development process, the suit claims, Zuckerberg stole the idea of the site, and opened his own TheFacebook.com in February 2004. Later in May ConnectU was finally opened.
Now ConnectU is asking court to shut Facebook dawn and give the whole company to ConnectU founders, since they own the idea of the social networking site. Suit against Zuckerberg includes fraud, copyright violation and misappropriation of trade secrets.
Zuckerberg’s attorney says there is no any contract between his client and ConnectU’s owners. There is no legal document proving that Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra shared copyrighted trade secrets with Facebook owner.
In 2004 ConnectU originally filed this suit against Facebook, but it was not considered because of technical problems.
Facebook is a rapidly growing social networking site. It was initially organized for Harvard University students, but later in September 2006 it was open for general public. Now it has 31 million users worldwide, compared to its main rival MySpace’s 60 million users. But it is growing much faster than MySpace. Meanwhile ConnectU has only 70000 users. HULIQ
