Facebook to Settle Thorny Lawsuit with ConnectU

Facebook wants to end its long and bitter lawsuit with ConnectU, which accused Facebook of stealing its idea of social networking for students.

ConnectU was founded a year earlier than Facebook by brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra. ConnectU was then known as HarvardConnections.com, a dating site for students and alumni of Harvard. Mark Zuckerberg helped ConnectU with their web design work and later left them to form Facebook. The ConnectU founders filed a lawsuit and claimed that they hired Zuckerberg, then a sophomore at Harvard, in 2003 to help create a campus-wide dating site called Harvard Connection. They say that he stalled on the project for months while nurturing his own idea and ultimately started TheFacebook.com. Later "The" was dropped from Facebook. Facebook also sued ConnectU for unfair business practices. The court fight between the two has been going on for a number of years and now Facebook wants to put an end to it by settling with the founders of ConnectU, according to New York Times blog. The case revealed that ConnectU may have been correct in their claim when evidence were shown against Zuckerberg during the trial. So Facebook might have made the financial settlement offer to make the case go away. Further delays could have hurt Facebook’s image. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed to the public yet, but all motions in the case against ConnectU have been terminated. Both ConnectU and Facebook did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment. Facebook fans will still stay at the site despite this financial settlement. They are more interested in Facebook than Zuckerberg.