Winklevii Trying Again: Suing Facebook Yet Again With A Different Argument
from the holy-crap:-give-up-already dept
Yesterday, we had a story about how the Winklevoss twins had finally realized that they had no chance to get a Supreme Court appeal of their own attempt to back out of a "settlement deal" with Facebook that made them at least $160 million richer (probably more by now). Like most people who read that story, we assumed that the Winklevii and partner Divya Narendra, had simply decided to take their millions and sulk. Instead, it looks like they are simply trying again with a different legal strategy.Yes, a day after admitting that they wouldn't file a Supreme Court appeal, they instead made a new filing in the district court in Boston, once again attacking the settlement agreement (which they had agreed to), asking the judge to investigate if Facebook "intentionally or inadvertently suppressed evidence."
It is true that some instant messages that Zuckerberg wrote while he was supposed to be working with the Winklevii emerged after the settlement had been agreed to. The Winklevii didn't focus on those in their original attempt to back out of the settlement, instead claiming that Facebook had mislead them about the value of Facebook shares. However, now it appears they're starting again using the instant messages as evidence, and claiming that Facebook withheld the relevant evidence, and saying that they wouldn't have settled if they'd seen that evidence.
The thing is, while the evidence does make Mark Zuckerberg look like a jerk, I'm not sure it actually helps the Winklevii's overall argument. And, frankly, the whole thing remains totally pointless. The Winklevii failed to build a serious competitor, but we're talking about what was effectively the first few months of both companies (Facebook and ConnectU). Nothing about that means that they should get any credit whatsoever for what Facebook became. The fact that they already got $160+ million out of this is more than enough for their own failure to build a successful company. They should drop this effort, and maybe spend some time -- and maybe some of their piles of money -- looking into ways to deflate their massive sense of entitlement for something they had nothing to do with.
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Filed Under: appeal, ideas, winklevoss
Companies: facebook
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Hell, it's right up there with Nathan Myrvold's patent trolling.
Someone should seriously sanction them.
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Wow this must be how the MPAA and RIAA feel all the time.
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Do you at all grasp the import of what you write?
"...deflate their massive sense of entitlement for something they had nothing to do with."
That'd cover the 5% percent or so (pick your own portion) of the populace whom I call The Rich, and who sheerly by strange social customs have "entitlement" that allows them to demand work-products from the rest of us, without trading anything except mysterious numbers from a computer somewhere.
I'll hope that sentence shows the dawn of your enlightenment as to actual economics.
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This is funny
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Zuckerberg says... "and if the change in my pocket wasn't enough, well, connectU and connect her too..."
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Barratry
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How about...
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Winklevii
We don't really know all the facts, we have no idea if ConnectU would have been successful if not short-circuited by Facebook, we don't really know much of anything in depth, but since one of the antagonists has more money, "he right!".
Same thing happened with Carnegie. After having more than a hundred innocent people murdered to increase his fortune, he became the "great philanthropist". Why? The murdered people were poor, he was fabulously wealthy, so "he right!"
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Re: Winklevii
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This is just so silly
The Winklevoss brothers are in serious need of psychotherapy.
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