Yes, but this is a question of ownership of a corporation. I doubt he has any claim to whatever Facebook's legal entity is. He may have claims for copyright violations if the contract included ownership of the code, etc. Which the contract appears not to include. He may have other claims but I doubt he has a straightforward ownership claim over the legal entity.
My reason for thinking this is the amount of VC that went into Facebook and the common sorts of IP issues that VC's regularly deal with it's extremely likely a new corporation was created and Zuck's assets transferred to that company.
Zuck may have transferred assets illegally to that corporation (copyrights, domains, etc) which would create a legit claim, but it's unlikely that he can prove a straightforward 83% ownership. Even if he can prove that it's going to be very hard to overcome the subsequent VC rounds that would have reduced everyone's equity stake.
Yeah, but his actual claim is that he hired Zuckerberg to develop it. He paid $1,000 up front on the understanding that once it was done on time, they'd have a 50/50 ownership interest, or more in proportion to how long overdue the project went.
According to this guy, it got done, but late, and as a result he owns 84% and Zuckerberg 16%, and Z. then went on and transformed the business several times into today's Facebook Inc., as if he owned it 100%. But he never asserted his claim until now, so unless he's been in a coma or something, his failure to act was an implicit waiver of rights. It's more like a trademark than a copyright situation; undefended trademark infringements are construed as abandonment after a while.
How about this guy? He says he was ripped of by Zuckerberg in a similar fashion. He had a site colloquially known as, guess what, 'the Face Book', and....
From Wikipedia, "Though the two entrepreneurs decided to work on their respective projects independently, they frequently discussed technological aspects of houseSYSTEM related to the Face Book, as well as Zuckerberg's latest project, about which he was secretive.[162] On January 11, 2004, shortly after using the Universal Face Book on houseSYSTEM, Zuckerberg registered the domain name "thefacebook.com" independently."
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But this guy says it's his design... It could be that Zuckerberg took the code from ConnectU and the design from this other guy to make Facebook.
Yes, but this is a question of ownership of a corporation. I doubt he has any claim to whatever Facebook's legal entity is. He may have claims for copyright violations if the contract included ownership of the code, etc. Which the contract appears not to include. He may have other claims but I doubt he has a straightforward ownership claim over the legal entity.
My reason for thinking this is the amount of VC that went into Facebook and the common sorts of IP issues that VC's regularly deal with it's extremely likely a new corporation was created and Zuck's assets transferred to that company.
Zuck may have transferred assets illegally to that corporation (copyrights, domains, etc) which would create a legit claim, but it's unlikely that he can prove a straightforward 83% ownership. Even if he can prove that it's going to be very hard to overcome the subsequent VC rounds that would have reduced everyone's equity stake.
Yeah, but his actual claim is that he hired Zuckerberg to develop it. He paid $1,000 up front on the understanding that once it was done on time, they'd have a 50/50 ownership interest, or more in proportion to how long overdue the project went.
According to this guy, it got done, but late, and as a result he owns 84% and Zuckerberg 16%, and Z. then went on and transformed the business several times into today's Facebook Inc., as if he owned it 100%. But he never asserted his claim until now, so unless he's been in a coma or something, his failure to act was an implicit waiver of rights. It's more like a trademark than a copyright situation; undefended trademark infringements are construed as abandonment after a while.
Implicit waiver of rights is a difficult concept. I bet that if Facebook cratered, the 84% ownership would come back to bite him.
84% ownership... of a limited-liability corporation? Yes. What an albatross.
How about this guy? He says he was ripped of by Zuckerberg in a similar fashion. He had a site colloquially known as, guess what, 'the Face Book', and....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/the-end-of-the...
From Wikipedia, "Though the two entrepreneurs decided to work on their respective projects independently, they frequently discussed technological aspects of houseSYSTEM related to the Face Book, as well as Zuckerberg's latest project, about which he was secretive.[162] On January 11, 2004, shortly after using the Universal Face Book on houseSYSTEM, Zuckerberg registered the domain name "thefacebook.com" independently."