February 11, 2009 by Matt Thomas
Corporate law firm, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, have slipped up by revealing exact monetary details of a legal settlement paid by Facebook to smaller social networking site, Connect U. The leak revealed that Facebook paid the princely sum of $65 million dollars to the site after they accused CEO Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their ideas in Facebook’s early development stages.
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the twins behind Connect U who were contemporaries of Zuckerberg’s at Harvard, were given the settlement in cash and stock options (Facebook was valued at $15 billion dollars in 2007, however that figure is seen by many within the industry as a little optimistic). It was apparently agreed by both parties that the payout would be a secret. With that no longer the case, Connect U’s lawyers have rushed to distance themselves from the leak and stifle any suggestion that it was deliberate…
“Our PR people released something, and it didn’t get caught by the people who knew. We had a policy against commenting or talking publicly about this case.”
Facebook have so far declined to comment though one would assume that they are less than happy at their legal embarrassment being made public.
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