Winklevoss Twins Give Up Facebook Fight

The Winklevoss twins have decided to drop their long-drawn legal battle with Facebook and its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and accept an earlier US$65 million settlement.

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and Harvard classmate Divya Narendra on Wednesday said in a filing through their lawyers to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that “after careful consideration” they would not appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The twins, who claimed that they, and not Zuckerberg, came up with the idea for Facebook, settled in 2008 in a cash-and-stock deal. They subsequently tried to undo the settlement, saying they were misled by Facebook about the value of the company’s shares they received as part of the deal.

The U.S. federal appeals court turned down in April a request by the Winklevoss twins to release them from their settlement.

The Winklevoss twins had settled their dispute and signed a release of all claims against Facebook, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote in the decision. The deal appears quite favorable in the light of recent market activity, Kozinski said in a reference to Facebook’s increased valuation since the settlement.

The Winklevoss twins did not give a reason for deciding not to appeal to the Supreme Court. As the court’s decision to stay issuance of the mandate in the case was premised upon the possibility of further appellate review, the “appellants no longer oppose issuance of the mandate, and have no objection to vacatur of the stay of issuance of mandate”, according to the filing.

The lengthy legal dispute between Zuckerberg and his three Harvard classmates was dramatized in the 2010 movie “The Social Network”.