Despite 'smoking gun,' ConnectU must settle with Facebook

The college rivalry cum legal brawl between ConnectU and Facebook that resulted in a settlement in April, has now been enforced by a California District Court judge.

As Harvard students, the Winklevoss brothers, Divya Narendra, and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg worked on a site called HarvardConnection, a campus dating site that eventually became ConnectU. According to the original suit filed in Boston Federal District Court in 2004, ConnectU accused Zuckerberg of stealing code from the project and using it in Facebook. Facebook volleyed the suit with a counterclaim that ConnectU had hacked into Facebook's user database.

In April, the two reached what appeared to be an amicable settlement, dismissing all claims.

Last-minute "smoking gun" evidence was recently found by ConnectU
that made the company want to back out of the settlement and re-try Facebook for fraud. IM logs found by a forensic expert in ConnectU's employ allegedly provided evidence that Facebook had altered the value of its common stock to decrease the settlement payout.

District Court Judge James Ware, however, sided with Facebook,
mandating the settlement according to the established terms (PDF available here).

An ostensibly final hearing is scheduled for July 2, which has been mysteriously made private. Neither party expressly demanded that the public be barred, but Ware said this course of action is the most beneficial.