The twins who claim that Marc Zuckerberg stole their idea for Facebook lodged an appeal Monday against a court ruling enforcing the terms of their 65-million-dollar settlement with the social networking billionaire, dpa reported.
Lawyers for the Winklevoss brothers, who were portrayed heavily in the movie The Social Network, asked the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to hear their case with a full 11-judge panel, after the court's three-judge panel ruled last week that the original settlement should stand.
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss had claimed that Zuckerberg lied about the value of Facebook when they reached the 2008 settlement over their claims that Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from them while all were students at Harvard University. Their shares are now worth more than 160 million dollars.
Judge Alex Kozinski ruled last week that the brothers had no right to renegotiate that settlement.
"The Winklevosses are not the first parties bested by a competitor who then seek to gain through litigation what they were unable to achieve in the marketplace," Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for the three-judge panel. "At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached."
But their lawyer, Jerome Falk Jr, insisted that the decision was flawed.
"Courts have wisely refused to enforce a settlement obtained by fraudulent means," he claimed in the new petition. "The panel's decision shut the courthouse door to a solid claim that Facebook obtained this settlement by committing securities fraud. Our petition asks the full Ninth Circuit to reopen that door."