Man Sues for a Piece of Facebook

[DANNY WOOL, SV411]

Paul Ceglia thinks that he should own Facebook. Ceglia, from Alleghany County, NY, claims that back in 2003, he made a deal with Mark Zuckerberg that he would design the social networking site for $1,000 and a 50 percent ownership stake. While it is unknown whether he got the $1,000 dollars, he certainly did not get his 50 percent. In fact, Mark Zuckerberg himself only owns about 24 percent of the company, currently valued at up to $22 billion.

But the case gets weirder. Ceglia also claims that the terms of the agreement stipulate that for every day that he exceeded the January 1, 2004, deadline to finish the project, he would receive another 1 percent share of ownership. In other words, he would be paid more for every day that he was late—not the usual terms for a contractor, but Zuckerberg was a kid at the time, so who knows exactly what he was thinking. In any event, when you add the 34 days that Ceglia was late to the original 50 percent, Ceglia claims that he should now own 84 percent of the company. That comes to anywhere between $10 and $18.5 billion.

Even more remarkable is the fact that a judge in Alleghany County seems to agree with Ceglia, and issued a restraining order preventing both Facebook and Zuckerberg from ” transferring, selling, assigning any assets, stocks, bonds, owned, possessed and/or controlled by the defendants,” at least until the case goes to court.

The fact is that Ceglia has a history of being “late.” Last year he and his wife were sued for failing to deliver wood pellets for which his company had taken preorders amounting to $200,000. Ceglia’s defense was that he was just “late.” Maybe he thought he could get more money if he held out longer.

Facebook has filed a motion with the court to dissolve the restraining order, arguing that the case is frivolous. Obviously, it is. If Ceglia had any sense, he would have waited 60 days, and owned 110 percent of Facebook. But Ceglia is certainly serious.

SV411 has discovered that on his Facebook page, Ceglia describes himself as “self-employed” from 2003 to the present and as “Facebook owner.”

I wonder if Pakistani officials will be adding him to the list of potential blasphemers who deserve to be hanged.

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