Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, twins, lost an appeal against an earlier settlement with Facebook which gave them $20 million in cash and $45 million in Facebook shares.
The identical twins asserted that Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for a web site.
The twins and Divya Narendra sued Zuckerberg for stealing their idea. Zuckerberg countersued, alleging the twins and their web site ConnectU hacked into Facebook, took data in order to spam and steal users.
The ensuing court battle “gave bread to many lawyers,” Chief Judge Alex Kozinski.
The twins tried to achieve in court what they had failed to achieve in real life. They made a deal and signed a release “of all claims against Facebook.”
“For whatever reason, they now want to back out. Like the district court, we see no basis for allowing them to do so. At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached,” Kozinski continued.