Facebook CEO Sniffs at Ownership Lawsuit

Posted on Jul 26, 2010

Flickr / Deneyterrio

Facebook honcho Mark Zuckerberg, pictured, says he’s not threatened by Paul Ceglia’s suit.

Here’s some palace intrigue from the inner chambers of the Facebook empire that could threaten the whole enterprise: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is denying the legitimacy of a contract, allegedly signed in 2003, that would give an “upstate New York wood-pellet vendor,” as Business Insider puts it here, majority ownership of the social networking giant.  —KA

ABC News:

Facing a lawsuit from a New York man who says he’s owed a majority stake in the $25 billion dollar company, Facebook now says it suspects that the contract at the heart of the suit is a forgery.

Paul Ceglia, the owner of a wood-pellet fuel company in rural Wellsville, N.Y., filed a complaint last month alleging that he signed a contract with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2003 that entitles him to an 84 percent stake in the company.

But in an e-mail, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook said the ownership lawsuit is “absurd.”

Read more

More Below the Ad

New and Improved Comments

We are launching a major overhaul of our comments section.

In addition to more robust spam filtering and moderation, new features include the ability to rate other comments, sort how they are displayed and respond directly via e-mail or in a thread.

Unfortunately, commenters will lose their existing Truthdig identities. It's a pain, we know, but on the plus side you will now be able to log in with a plethora of options, including Google, Twitter, Facebook and Disqus accounts.

Before launching this system we spent months in discussion with our top commenters. We listened to the feedback and we hope you like what we've come up with.

Please direct any problems or concerns to us via our contact page.