Zuckerberg settled Facebook suit for $65m

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg paid $65m to two university classmates

A mistake by a legal firm has revealed that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg paid $65m ($44m) to end a legal case over the origin of his company.

Zuckerberg was being sued by two former university classmates, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who claimed that he stole the idea for Facebook from their social networking site HarvardConnect, later called ConnectU.

Zuckerberg settled out of court but the details of the case have been kept under wraps, despite legal efforts to find out the value of the deal.

However, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, a law firm in California which acted for ConnectU, has just trumpeted the amount in a newsletter advertising its prowess. vnunet.com's sister publication The Recorder/Cal Law was the first to spot the advert.

The law firm lists wins in the advertising newsletter, and said that it won $65m from Facebook. The amount was paid in cash and Facebook shares.

"$65m is a significant sum. It's certainly more than the cost of the defence, " said Chris Scott Graham, a partner at Silicon Valley law firm Dechert LLP.

"But it's a very small percentage of [Facebook's] valuation and could therefore be argued by Facebook to be a payment based on considerations other than the merits of the claims."

John Quinn, chairman of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, had asked The Recorder/Cal Law not to publish the details, and then declined to comment on the amount.