The long, infamous litigation between Facebook and the Winklevoss twins seems to have screeched to a halt, if a federal appeals court judge has anything to say about it.
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, along with fellow Hardvard peer Divya Narendra, entered in a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, for allegedly stealing their idea for a social network website and using their coding to do so. Facebook then countersued the three and their site ConnectU, claiming they had hacked into Facebook to spam users with stolen data.
All four finally reached a settlement in 2008 for $65 million. But later, the Winklevoss twins and Narendra decided to pull out, stating that Facebook misrepresented the value of its stock. A judge ruled against the three, but they decided to fight it. All of which was later dramatically retold in the Academy Award winning The Social Network.
Monday morning, Chief Judge for the Ninth District of San Francisco Alex Kozinski ruled in favor of the previous court decision. And he had no problems voicing his intent to have the litigation die.
"The courts might have obliged, had the Winklevosses not settled the dispute and signed a release of all claims against Facebook," Kozinski wrote via CNET. "We see no basis for allowing them to [back out]. [...] At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached.""