Report: Facebook to Settle Lawsuits with ConnectU

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on April 8, 2008 - 9:22am.

New York - Online social network Facebook is finalizing the settlement of several lawsuits with ConnectU, whose founders claim that Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for a company when they were all Harvard undergraduates, The New York Times reported. Citing a person briefed on the status of the lawsuits, The Times reports that all motions in Facebook's countersuit against ConnectU, which claim unfair business practices, have been terminated, while motions to dismiss all of the pending litigation between the companies are expected to be filed "within weeks."

Any financial terms of the settlements have not been disclosed.

ConnectU's founders -- brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and partner Divya Narendra -- claim in their lawsuit that they hired Zuckerberg in 2003 to work on a campus dating site called Harvard Connection, which later became ConnectU.

But they say Zuckerberg instead stole their business plan and source code and eventually launched TheFacebook.com in 2004.