Winklevoss Twins Want Another Shot at Facebook, Zuckerberg

A couple of years ago Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook paid out $20 million in cash and $45 million in stock to settle claims related to the founding of the company. It was a high price to pay but it ended an unnecessary legal distraction.

Over and done with? Not so fast.

Apparently, it's not going to be over until a couple of handsome, tall, rich Harvard-educated Olympic rowers say it's over. Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, whose legal battle against Zuckerberg was featured in the critically-acclaimed 2010 movie The Social Network, intend to ask a federal judge next month to throw out the original settlement so they can again press a new lawsuit against Zuckerberg and Facebook.

The identical twins (along with fellow Harvard student Divya Narendra, ) claim they got shortchanged in the settlement and are entitled to an upwardly-revised settlement. "The principle is that they didn't fight fair," said Tyler Winklevoss in an interview with the New York Times. "The principle is that Mark stole the idea." From the profile:

"For the interview, they wore hoodies and jeans, and only the variation in the hoodies -- one zippered with a Ron Jon Surf Shop emblem, one a pullover with a Quicksilver logo -- helped to tell them apart. As they talked about the Facebook case, no detail was too small to omit, from where they first met Mr. Zuckerberg (the Kirkland House dining room) to the layout of Mr. Zuckerberg's dorm room, to the content of the e-mails he had sent them after they asked him to do computer programming for a Web site called Harvard Connection.

"They recited arcane facts about the valuation of private companies and even quoted from the Securities Act of 1934, which they say Facebook violated when it drew up the settlement. In addition to a bigger payday, the twins say they want a court to reconsider their original claims about Facebook's founding, pointing to instant messages on the subject sent by Mr. Zuckerberg to various friends. The messages have come to light since the brothers signed the deal. But they say Facebook executives and board members have known about the messages since 2006, and played dirty by concealing them when they negotiated the settlement."

 The Winklevosses argue that when you consider those documents, it becomes a "dramatically different picture,"  With Facebook now valued on a private exchange at around $50 billion, a huge amount money would be on the line if the judge goes along with the Winklevosses' request. Of course, the obvious risk of a new trial has ramifications for both sides. Pondering a possible future as a public company, Facebook doesn't need this kind of publicity dragging on for months, if not years. But if a decision goes against them, the Winklevosses would be forever remembered for their dramatized movie personas - as well as for being latter-day Ahabs who blew tens of millions of dollars because of an obsession they were unable to overcome. An expensive price to pay for a legacy.