After reaching a $65 million settlement with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg back in 2008, ConnectU founders Tyler and Cameron Winkelvoss are now appealing the settlement.
The twins agreed to a settlement in 2008 that got them $20 million in cash and $45 million in stock, valued at $36 per share. Now, the pair are alleging that they were misled about the real value of Facebook stock in 2008, and have brought the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
A skeptical three judge panel began considering today whether the Winkelvoss twins have a case. They scrutinized the argument put forward by the twins through attorney Jerome Falk. “The (ConnectU) founders are pretty smart people themselves, the twins also have a father from Wharton School who is very bright,” Judge John Wallace said.
“If you have all these people to advise you, isn’t it difficult to say this is one of those things where you were taken advantage of?”
Wallace was pointing out that the settlement was reached by teams of lawyers and a top mediator. The Winkelvoss brothers had valued the Facebook stock based on a news report that Microsoft had bought a small piece of the social networking site in a deal that valued the stock at around $36, and the company at $15 billion.
Result for: court of appeals
Thanks to a new judgement made by the United States Court of Appeals, used game and software sales may be a thing of the past.
The decision (linked below) rules that “a software user is a licensee rather than an owner.”
Originally, the suit was brought forward by Autodesk, the makers of the expensive AutoCAD software, who were angry a consumer purchased many copies of the software and then resold them on auction site eBay.
Autodesk wanted to know who, legally, had the rights to the software.
This new ruling does not implicitly imply video games, but games are considered software, so the ruling could affect the used game market, as well.
It will be interesting to see how the major publishers run with this ruling, and we will certainly keep you updated.
Result for: court of appeals
The US Court Of Appeals For The District Of Columbia has ruled that the FCC lacks the authority to enforce network neutrality rules for broadband internet providers.
The ruling came in Comcast’s appeal of the that agency’s 2008 ruling on the cable giant’s practice of throttling P2P traffic.
Although the court’s decision means the FCC doesn’t have the authority to punish Comcast for their “network management” practices, their legal problems aren’t over yet. In fact it clears the way for lawsuits pending in federal court which have been held up by the question of FCC jurisdiction.
There’s also the potential for action by the Federal Trade Commission over alleged false advertising of their service.
What makes things more complicated is that the FCC may still be able to establish jurisdiction over net neutrality by revisiting a 2002 ruling on the nature of internet service. At that time it was determined that broadband internet was merely an information service, and therefore not subject to the same level of regulation as common carrier service like traditional phone lines.
