Facebook's Beans Spilled: $65 Million In Settlement
The Recorder, based in San Francisco, was first to report Tuesday that one of the law firms involved in the dispute, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, which represented ConnectU, had printed the amount of the settlement in its business newsletter.
According to the newspaper, the note "WON $65 million settlement against Facebook" appears in Quinn Emanuel's January edition. Reporter Zusha Elinson writes that Quinn Emanuel Chairman John Quinn didn't provide comment besides asking The Recorder to not print the amount.
ConnectU—a social networking company founded by some of Zuckerberg's former classmates, Divya Narendra and Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss—sued Facebook in 2004, claiming Zuckerberg had not only edged them out of what was allegedly an oral contract for Facebook but also used source code for the site that had belonged to them.
The story seemed to wrap up in February 2008 with a confidential settlement involving cash and Facebook shares. But Zuckerberg's accusers later tried to rescind the settlement, saying they'd been kept in the dark about how much Facebook was actually worth.
According to The Recorder, ConnectU's founders fired Quinn Emanuel in 2008 and are currently in arbitration with the firm following Quinn Emanuel's seeking of a reported $13 million in contingency fees. ConnectU's current representation, from Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, didn't comment to the newspaper, nor did a Facebook spokesman.