Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his legal team are facing yet another lawsuit over the popular social networking site.
Mr Zuckerberg is being sued by programmer Paul Ceglia, who alleges in a civil lawsuit filed in New York recently that he owns 84 per cent of the website.
Ceglia claims that he signed a contract with Zuckerberg back in 2003 to develop an earlier model of the Facebook website and that the terms of the agreement entitled him to a $1,000 fee and a 50 per cent stake in the product. He also alleges that the contract stipulated that Ceglia would earn an extra 1 per cent per day until the website project was completed. This would entitle Ceglia to an 84 per cent stake in Facebook up to 2004.
No doubt confident in their abilities – and the financial support from the company’s professional indemnity insurance policy, if they have one – to refute the allegations in court, Facebook have described the lawsuit as ‘frivolous’, saying they will fight it “vigorously”.
This case is just the latest in a long line of legal disputes the Facebook creator has faced over the ownership of the site. Just last year, Zuckerberg paid out $65 million to two former classmates who alleged that he had stolen the idea for Facebook from them.