Court delays decision on attempt to shut down Facebook

A federal judge last night delayed ruling on whether to throw out a lawsuit filed against the founder of Facebook.com, saying he needed more information about allegations that Mark Zuckerberg stole the ideas of the creators of a rival social networking Web site.

Judge Douglas Woodlock gave ConnectU founders Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss - who are twin brothers - and Divya Narendra until August 8 to flesh out their allegations against Zuckerberg, which include fraud, copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets.

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The lawsuit also names several other founding members of Facebook and asks the court to give control of the company and its assets to ConnectU's founders.

Facebook said in a statement that it was pleased with the outcome of the hearing.

"We continue to disagree with the allegations that Mark Zuckerberg stole any ideas or code to build Facebook," the statement said. "We intend to honor the judge's request not to comment further in the media and will continue to vigorously defend this case in court."

Facebook is the world's fastest growing website with around 150,000 new users registering every day. A group has naturally already been formed on the site entitled "Save Facebook".

Second only to MySpace in terms of users, Facebook's simple format helps people to stay in touch, meet new friends and share photos and news.

The three founders of rival site ConnectU say Mark Zuckerberg agreed to finish computer code for their site, but repeatedly stalled and eventually created Facebook using their ideas.

Facebook started in 2004, a few months before ConnectU went online, and now has 31 million users, compared with about 70,000 users for ConnectU, based in Greenwich, Connecticut.

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Last year, Facebook turned down a $1 billion buyout offer from Yahoo Inc.

A spokeswoman for Palo Alto, California-based Facebook declined to comment. But in court filings, Facebook's attorneys say ConnectU has no evidence for "broad-brush allegations" against Zuckerberg, and deny he pilfered his ideas for Facebook from his fellow Harvard students.

"Each of them had different interests and activities," they wrote. "Only one of them had an idea significant enough to build a great company. That one person was Mark Zuckerberg."

The lawsuit claims that in December 2002, ConnectU founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss - who are brothers - and Divya Narendra began to develop a social networking site for the Harvard community called Harvard Connection.

In November 2003, the three asked Zuckerberg to complete software and database work on the site.

They repeatedly asked him to finish before they graduated in June 2004, and Zuckerberg assured them he was working hard to complete it, the lawsuit says.

"Such statements were false and Zuckerberg never intended to provide the code and instead intended to breach his promise ... and intended to steal the idea for the Harvard Connection Web site, and in fact he did so," the suit alleges.

Zuckerberg launched Thefacebook.com in February 2004. ConnectU started its own social network in May of that year. By beating ConnectU to the market, Facebook gained a huge advantage, the lawsuit claims.

ConnectU's founders have written on their Web site about the "ups and downs" of their company history, including a programmer "who stole our ideas to create a competing site."

"But we've been troopers," they wrote. "At first we were devastated and climbed into a bottle of Jack Daniels for a bit, but eventually emerged with a bad headache and renewed optimism. We weren't going to lie down and get walked over like this."