Legal Action Over Invention of Facebook Nears Settlement

Business News IN BRIEF

*Facebook is believed to be close to settling the long-running legal dispute over who invented the social networking site. Mark Zuckerberg, the 23-year-old Harvard student who launched it in 2004 as a way for his classmates to keep in touch, was accused of stealing the idea from two fellow students, pretending to work for them on their social networking project but in fact using the computer code to create Facebook and stymie the development of their site, called ConnectU. The founders of ConnectU – brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and their colleague, Divya Narendra – could agree a settlement within the next few weeks, it was reported by the New York Times. The trio had been seeking a court order that would shut down Facebook, but a judge ordered the two sides into mediation. Motions in Facebook’s counter-suit again-st ConnectU, which accuses it of unfair business practices, have been withdrawn.

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