Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the twins who settled with Facebook two years ago in a dispute over the social network’s origins, were back in court this week trying to undo the settlement.
What makes the case so interesting, besides the inherent drama of the twins’ accusation that Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea, is the fact that Facebook hasn’t been able to make the Winklevosses go away. In addition to $20 million in cash, they received Facebook shares that are worth an estimated $150 million now. How much more money do they need? Especially since, by asking the courts to throw out the settlement, they could end up with nothing?
Earlier this afternoon, law professor Steven M. Davidoff cast a skeptical eye on the appeal in The New York Times. There seem to be two parts to Winkelvosses’ legal argument: They claim 1) that the settlement wasn’t sufficiently detailed, and 2) that Facebook didn’t disclose a low company valuation that made the shares less valuable than the twins believed.
On the first point, Davidoff says it has “a surface appealâ€, since the settlement was just a two-page document, but he said courts have been willing to enforce these types of agreements in the past. On the second point, VentureBeat’s Owen Thomas has argued that Facebook is playing “a dangerous game†by claiming it didn’t have any responsibility to provide the correct valuation to potential shareholders. But Davidoff (who â€" sorry Owen â€" probably has a little more legal expertise) sides with Facebook, pointing out that the company never provided a valuation to the twins (so there wasn’t an incorrect valuation that it needed to correct). The Winklevosses made their own assumption based on a press release. (Yes, really.)
Davidoff concludes by saying that the twins can probably squeeze more money out of Facebook but that they should act soon before their legal case evaporates. Then he gets to the big catch: “But this assumes the Winklevosses are economically rational actors and not making the mistake of thinking that the courtroom is going to give them the justice they think they deserve.â€
In previous statements, the Winklevosses have suggested that they’re more interested in “the principle … that Mark stole the idea†than in making money. That, of course, could be a strategy as well, but the fact that the twins are pursuing this case at all suggests that it might not be. I suspect that what want they’re really pursuing is recognition, either from Facebook or in court, that they were the brains behind Facebook.
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Companies: Facebook
People: Cameron Winklevoss, Mark Zuckerberg, Tyler Winklevoss
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