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Facebook, a popular social-networking website, is being sued by ConnectU, a much smaller rival network. ConnectU claims that Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, stole its concept for the online college community. While Facebook has asked federal judge Douglas Woodcock to throw the lawsuit out of court, Woodcock has delayed his decision. This gives the founders of ConnectU, Divya Narendra and Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, until August 8, 2007, to offer more specific allegations against the Facebook founders. Woodcock has expressed skepticism about ConnectU's claim and has wondered whether the network's founder had really made a 'substantive' deal with Zuckerberg or whether they had made a 'handshake agreement.' Ian Ballon, intellectual property attorney at Greenberg Traurig LLP, says the founders of ConnectU must show that specific elements of their idea matched what ultimately became the Facebook site. While it is easy to allege that a contract has been made and to allege the misappropriation of trade secrets, specifics must be defined, says Ballon. The Winklevoss brothers, who hope to compete at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 on the United States rowing team, say they came up with the idea for a collegiate social network in 2002 and asked Zuckerberg to join them in developing the idea in 2003. They were 'shocked' when he started TheFacebook.com in 2004, they say.
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