Anyone who has seen The Social Network knows about Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss twins. Facebook co-founder Saverin was forced out, sued Facebook, and settled for a 5% stake of the company. Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss contracted Zuckerberg to build a Harvard-based social network for them, but when Zuckerberg launched “TheFacebook.com” instead, the twins sued. That case was also settled, though the twins have been trying hard to rescind it in court.
But there’s more to Facebook’s legacy of lawsuits than the movie mentioned. Last year Ceglia claimed that he and Zuckerberg signed a contract giving Ceglia 50% of Facebook. Most legal experts dismissed Ceglia’s lawsuit as outlandish, but it has resurfaced this week with evidence that promises to make this a mess y affair.
So what exactly happened at Harvard in 2003 and 2004? Why have so many people claimed an ownership stake in Facebook? Who is Paul Ceglia, and does he actually have a case?
To answer that, we need to explore Facebook’s complicated ownership history.
Eduardo Saverin
Until 2009 Saverin wasn’t even acknowledged as a co-founder. It took a lawsuit and a settlement to make that happen.
Both side dispute the details of the case, but here are the basics. In 2003, Mark Zuckerberg (a sophomore at Harvard) approached Saverin (a junior) about TheFacebook.com. He asked Eduardo to become his business partner and to put down $15,000 for the servers needed to run the site. In return, he’d get about 30% of the company.
When Facebook took off in 2004, Zuckerberg and another co-founder, Dustin Moskovitz, decided that they had to move to Silicon Valley. They got a place in Palo Alto and started coding. Saverin had an in ternship with Lehman...
