Who is the owner of Facebook? Court to decide
By siliconindia   |   Monday, 06 December 2010, 15:58 IST
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Who is the owner of Facebook? Court to decide
Bangalore: A 28 year old, Divya Narendra, son of an Indian immigrant doctor couple in the U.S., has moved to courtroom in battle with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He believes that he, and not Mark Zuckerberg, came up with the idea of social networking website Facebook. Narendra, along with his former Harvard University classmates Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss, has charged Zuckerberg with stealing the idea they conceived over a year, when they were students at Harvard University, reports Ishani Duttagupta from The Economic Times. Narendra said, "I spent almost one year developing the concept and searching for programmers along with two of my classmates to build what was then called Harvard-Connection.com, which was a social network for Harvard students which was to expand to other schools. When I heard about Mark Zuckerberg for the first time in the fall of 2003, he seemed like a natural fit to join our team. Three months later, Facebook launched and all the time and effort I had put into my vision had been taken away." He and the twins first tried to convince Harvard's administrative board and president to take action against Zuckerberg. But they had to file a lawsuit as the matter was outside the jurisdiction of the university. While an initial settlement had been reached in the suit, reportedly at $65 million, it was reopened in May 2010. If the current suit goes in favour of Narendra and his friends, the value of the settlement could escalate to about $466 million.