SAN FRANCISCO - Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the identical twins who claimed that they, not Mark Zuckerberg, had the original idea for Facebook, have lost the latest chapter in their six-year legal feud. But it's a loss that comes with a pretty nice consolation prize. And it may not be the end of the case.
A three-judge panel of a federal appeals court here ruled Monday that the brothers, whose fight over Facebook's origins was the narrative arc of the Hollywood hit "The Social Network," cannot back out of a settlement they signed with the company in 2008. That settlement is now worth about $200 million, according to estimates by experts.
The twins had asked the court to undo the settlement so they could pursue their original case against Zuckerberg and Facebook, and presumably win a richer payday.
They had argued that Facebook had deceived them about the original value of the settlement, and the court roundly rejected their claims. Yet the sharply worded decision, written by Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, apparently has not persuaded the twins to give up. They said through their lawyers that they planned to ask that their case be heard by the entire appeals court.
Kozinski wrote: "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. With the help of a team of lawyers and a financial adviser, they made a deal that appears quite favorable in light of recent market activity."
Kozinski added: "For whatever reason, they now want to back out. Like the district court, we see no basis for allowing them to do so. At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached."
But the twins are not giving up.
"In my judgment, the opinion raises extremely significant questions of federal law that merit review by the entire 9th Circuit Court of Appeals," Jerome B. Falk Jr., the lead appellate lawyer for the Winklevosses, said in a statement.
