Facebook twins lose court case

By John Oates

The creepy Winklevoss twins have lost an appeal against an earlier settlement with Facebook which gave them $20m in cash and $45m in Facebook shares.

The identical twins, granted 15 minutes of fame by the film the Social Network, claim that Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for a website of Harvard alumni.

For the purposes of this case, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss dispute the value put on Facebook on which their share settlement was granted.

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski described the background to the case. First, the twins and Divya Narendra sued Zuckerberg for stealing their idea. Then, Zuckerberg countersued, alleging the twins and their site ConnectU hacked into Facebook in order to pinch data in order to spam and steal users.

Kozinski said the ensuing court-fest "gave bread to many lawyers."

But Kozinski said the twins were trying to achieve in court what they had failed to achieve in real life. He said they had made a deal and signed a release "of all claims against Facebook".

Kozinkski said: "For whatever reason, they now want to back out. Like the district court, we see no basis for allowing them to do so. At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached."

Of course Kozinski is famous around Vulture Towers for accidentally sharing his porn stash with the world. His personal site, while he was overseeing an obscenity trial, was found to contain pictures of a naked woman painted like a cow, a half-naked man cavorting with an aroused farm animal and step-by-step illustrations of a woman trimming her lady-garden.

The page now displays a simple message:

Ain't nothin' here.
Y'all best be movin' on, compadre.

If you like PDFs you can download the whole Facebook-Winklevoss judgment here (15-page PDF/68.2KB) .

We're pleased to see Judge Kozinski not only has his own Facebook page but also a fan page which describes him as "the number one male Superhottie of the Federal Judiciary ..." ®