Rival Claims Facebook Stole Idea

A court hearing opened yesterday into a claim that one of the founders of the social networking website Facebook stole the idea.

The case is being brought by a rival social networking website, ConnectU, whose owners allege that Mark Zuckerberg, 23, who helped to set up Facebook, stole the idea, technology, design and business plan. They were all students at Harvard University at the time.

The ConnectU owners want Facebook, which is worth at least $1bn (£490m), closed down and its assets transferred to them, with damages.

Facebook is seeking to have parts of the claim, lodged three years ago, dismissed. The website was launched in February 2004, a few months before ConnectU, and is one of the world's most popular sites, with an estimated 30 million members. ConnectU, which has only 70,000 members, sued in September 2004, claiming that Mr Zuckerberg, who had been working with them at Harvard, had breached an agreement to complete the ConnectU website.

One of the founders of ConnectU, Tyler Winklevoss, has said: "You feel robbed. The kids down the hall are using it, and you're thinking 'That's supposed to be us'. We're not there because one greedy kid cut us out."

Mr Winklevoss and the other ConnectU founders said that in November 2003 they asked Mr Zuckerberg, who had enrolled at Harvard in 2002 and had a reputation as a web whizz kid, to complete software for them but claim he repeatedly stalled.

At an earlier hearing the judge dismissed the case on a technicality, but ConnectU refiled. The judge hearing yesterday's case is expected to rule quickly.