Facebook founder accused of fraud
Updated on 08 August 2007
Facebook has caught the attentions of millions, but now its founder is accused of stealing the idea while at university.
Facebook has become part of the zeitgeist, a fashionable website with tens of millions of users across the world.
But now, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the social networking site, is being accused in court of stealing the idea behind the site while he was at university.
Technical whizzkid
Zuckerberg enrolled at Harvard to study psychology in 2002 and quickly developed a reputation on campus as a programming hot-shot.
Three older students, the Winklevoss brothers and Divya Narendra, wanted to meet him and invited him to write a computer code for their big new idea.
Tyler Winklevoss said, "We met Mark, we talked and we thought 'This guy seems like a winner''"
The claim
They say Zuckerberg agreed to write the computer software for a students' network at Harvard. According to them, he failed to do so and then created Facebook using their ideas.
They want Facebook's ownership to revert to them but Mr Zuckerberg denies accusations of fraud and misappropriation of trade secrets.
