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Facebook's ConnectU Settlement: $65 Million

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the twins who started ConnectU, a social network that Mark Zuckerberg used to work on, "may have had some serious evidence" that Zuckerberg stole their ideas in creating Facebook, according to a brochure made by the business litigation firm that represented the twins in their case against the Facebook founder. The brochure claims that Facebook recently paid the brothers (and other ConnectU stockholders) $65 million to settle the long-running lawsuit brought against Zuckerberg after he left their company to start his own site.

Presumably, the brochure contained the sum in order advertise the money-winning ability of Quinn Emanuel, the law firm representing the Winklevoss brothers. As reported yesterday in Online Media Daily, a law pub called The Recorder found the brochure, and said the following: "Lawyers in the heavyweight fight had expended great effort to keep the ($65 million) settlement secret, but ConnectU's former lawyers from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges published the amount in a firm advertisement trumpeting the firm's prowess. The disclosure was apparently inadvertent."

As VentureBeat's Eric Eldon says, it's hard to see what the Winklevoss brothers could have been holding over Zuckerberg's head. They are not social networking pioneers, and their site never turned out to be much of a rival to Facebook. Perhaps, then, "it's poetic justice" that the news is leaking out through the firm that represented the twins, because, as Eldon says, leaking confidential settlement information is the kind of thing that can get lawyers disbarred.

Read the whole story at VentureBeat »

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