Judge delays Facebook court case

The judge's message on Wednesday to ConnectU over its intellectual property lawsuit against fellow social-networking site Facebook was clear: show us the evidence.

ConnectU, which is accusing Facebook of stealing its ideas, has been in legal pursuit of its rival, Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, and early employees Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum and Christopher Hughes for nearly three years, and there still isn't an end in sight.

Massachusetts Federal Judge Douglas P Woodlock repeatedly stressed that there was simply not enough evidence to back up allegations that Zuckerberg, who had performed programming work for ConnectU while it was in development, had pilfered the start-up's business model and code. Facebook now boasts more than 30 million members worldwide, while ConnectU stands at well under 100,000.

Woodlock asked ConnectU's counsel to revise its court complaint before the case could go forward. "Claims must have a factual basis," the judge said. The allegations, which ranged from breach of confidence to fraud to misappropriation of trade secrets, comprised a "most evanescent of explanations," Woodlock said. He gave ConnectU's founders -- Divya Narendra and twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss--until 8 August to provide a revised complaint. He also gave Facebook two weeks after that date to respond.

Consequently, anyone who was hoping for a definitive answer from Wednesday's dismissal hearing for the ongoing legal tussle was left disappointed, as the case will probably not see much further development until the autumn.

Woodlock also indicated that even the strongest of ConnectU's claims, the count of copyright infringement, is still on a shaky foundation. The reason, he said, is that the majority of the allegations date back to the days before either Facebook or ConnectU was a formal corporation, when all the founders of both companies were students at Harvard.

"It's gossamer thin on the question of contract," Woodlock said. Indeed, no formal deals were signed between Zuckerberg and the ConnectU founders, and the "paper trail" is limited to emails and telephone voice mail messages that Woodlock recommended the claimants spell out more effectively in their revised complaint.

Accusations of media exploitation
Both the defence and the judge took issue with the claimants arranging a press conference shortly following the hearing, indicating that it was an inappropriate and unprofessional move that turned the small legal hearing into a media spectacle. Hornick attributed the decision to hold the press conference to the unusual lifestyles of the twin Winklevoss brothers, who are rowers with Olympic aspirations. "[The Winklevosses] are training for the world championships in rowing in Munich [this summer]," the claimants' counsel explained. "They are deeply and intensely involved in training."

"Until now, ConnectU has received very few requests from the press," Tyler Winklevoss said in a prepared statement. "We have recently received so much press in the past couple weeks that a press conference seemed a good way to provide information and not interfere with our daily lives." Additionally, Tyler Winklevoss said they wanted to clear up some of the speculation. "We have seen some inaccuracies in the media reports," he said. "We would like to correct them. For example, the media has reported that ConnectU wants to shut down Facebook; that is not true."