Facebook settles with group that claimed it had the idea first

After years of legal struggles over the two Harvard-rooted social networking sites and their respective origins, ConnectU and Facebook appear to be finally settling.

The suit dates back to 2004 in Boston's Federal District Court, when ConnectU's founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra sued Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly illegally using source code in his site that he had written for ConnectU's predecessor, called HarvardConnection.

Zuckerberg was reportedly employed by HarvardConnection in his sophomore year to help develop the campus dating site which eventually turned into ConnectU. Narendra has readily admitted that Zuckerberg had no legal contract binding him to the site, and after three years of litigation, the initial suit was dismissed. Some evidence in the case, including blogs and emails from Zuckerberg were then published in 02138 magazine, they prove no wrongdoing, but effectively made his integrity and creativity suspect.

A second case was filed against Facebook under one month ago and has already come to a conclusion. A settlement has reportedly been reached between the two sites, but terms are undisclosed. All motions against ConnectU were also dismissed.