Facebook accusers "more evidence" deadline looms tomorrow

Meanwhile the site faces another patent infringement lawsuit

7 August 2007 10:42 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Tomorrow is the date set by the court that the Facebook vs. ConnectU court case will resume in Boston.

The owner of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg and his business partners are facing the legal action over claims Zuckerberg stole the idea behind Facebook's billion dollar success story.

The action is being brought by three former Harvard classmates of Zuckerberg who claim he stole their idea, business plan and coding while he worked on their social-networking site ConnectU.

Zuckerberg has always denied these claims and had asked that the case be dismissed which was what the previous hearing was to consider.

The judge said he needed more information (and, crucially evidence) about allegations that the idea behind the Facebook was stolen from the rival social networking website.

Stating that "Dorm room chitchat does not make a contract", the judge gave the ConnectU founders two weeks, until 8th August, to provide more information to back up their allegations of fraud, copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets.

A lot of attention will be focussed on the hearing tomorrow, but this case has been rumbling on since 2004 now - you would assume if there was hard evidence, the ConnectU team would have produced it by now.

There are more legal wranglings ahead for the social netwroking super-site. Another lawsuit has recently been filed against them.

It is a patent infringement accusation with the plaintiff wanting royalties from Facebook. The patent claims relate to social networks built around communities of users with "common interests".

Facebook's networks are based universities, business, etc, which fits this description.

The new lawsuit cites US Patent number 6,519,629 ("System for creating a community for users with common interests to interact in") issued in 2003 owned by Cross Atlantic Capital Partners.