Social network giant Facebook will file a motion to dismiss a case in which one man thinks he’s owed a substantial piece of Marky Z’s pie. Paul Ceglia’s case to reclaim what he imagines he is owed (that’s 84% of the company) has gone on for some months with the legal mudslinging that’s been present throughout still very much there for all to see. During a four-hour federal court hearing, Orin Snyder, the head of Facebook’s legal team, said: “Since Day One, this case has been about pressuring us into writing a check, and from Day One, we’ve said that’s not going to happen.”
If their efforts to end the suit they’ve got a Baldrick-esque cunning plan up their sleeve. Snyder told the court they have forensic evidence confirming the ink on a contract is a lot wetter than it seems. He told the magistrate judge Leslie G. Foschio: “It’s less than 2 years old.”
Ceglia claims the contract is eight years old and entitles him to 83% of a company he claims to have set up with Zuckerberg whilst in College.
The verbal bickering won’t end here.
Dean Boland, one of Ceglia’s lawyers, claims Facebook damaged the document by making it turn yellow to lead jurors to question the authenticity. He added: “They’re going to look at this and think, ‘There’s something wrong with this.’”
Snyder’s counter claim is that Ceglia tried to age the ink and you can now start to imagine why this case has already run for 18 months. Observers in the online gambling industry will note the close comparison between Mr Ceglia and infamous patent troll Scott Lewis. We’ve speculated in the past that the unmasking might happen at some point in the future when Ceglia is revealed as Lewis. We don’t know anyone that’s seen them both in the same place together so it’s possible.
