Earlier this year, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss as well as Divya Narendra decided that the settlement they had reached with Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook was no longer satisfactory.  They elected to turn down the agreement in order to seek more from the world’s largest social networking company.

As most of you have been following this story since the beginning and/or have seen the Academy Award nominated faux-documentary The Social Network, we shall keep the background to a minimum.

While all of the players in this suit attended Harvard University, the twins (from now on known as Winklevii) created ConnectU, a social networking startup.  They claimed that Zuckerberg ripped off their idea when he created Facebook, and feel as though they are entitled to a large percentage of its worth.  Zuckerberg denies the claim.  The original settlement was for Facebook to pay the Winklevii $20 million in cash and $45 in stock.  In January, the Winklevii argued that Facebook did not disclose certain internal valuations, and therefore their payout should have been much larger.

Well, today the battle may be over as the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the original settlement will be enforced.  As quoted in Reuters:

“At some point, litigation must come to an end,” Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote. “That point has now been reached.”

So, the Winklevii were ripped off by the callous Zuckerberg or they scored a whole bunch of dough for doing absolutely nothing – either way it seems as though the drawn out litigation might be over.  Sadly, there now may not be enough material for Social Network 2 :  The Legend of Zucky’s Gold.

(Image courtesy of AP)