For the second time in three years, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is in court, facing charges that he stole the code that’s the basis for his massivelysuccessful social network site. The court date this week in Boston has been brought by brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narenda, who claim that Zuckerberg, whom they asked tohelp them create a college social networking site in 2002, when they were all students at Harvard, stole the code he’d created for them, along with the business plan and design. Zuckerberg went on to create Facebook, for which he turned down a $1 billion offer from Yahoo, while the site created by the other, called ConnectU,hasn’t fare as well, with just 70,000 users, compared to Facebook’s 31 million. The trio first brought suit against Zuckerberg in 2004, but that was thrown out because of atechnical error. The charges this time remain essentially the same, with the three saying Zuckerberg was a full but unpaid member of their team whom they accuse of copyright infringement, thestealing of trade secrets, breach of contract and fraud. They’re asking for Facebook to be shut down, along with a transfer to them of Zuckerberg’s assets, and additional money to bepaid as damages. Realistically, Facebook is unlikely to be closed by any judge. If found guilty, Zuckerberg will likely have to pay a monetary penalty instead. However, he’s claimed thathe’s innocent; in an article he said, “there is really good documentation of this: our code base versus theirs.”
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