Law suit could shut down Facebook

The founders of a social networking Web site are suing Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, and they want to shut his site down. \nThe charges listed in the suit include fraud, copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets.\nBrothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narenda, co-founders of ConnectU, were given until Aug. 8 to “flesh out their allegations against Mark Zuckerberg,” according to The Associated Press. \nThe trio claims Zuckerberg stole their idea while they were all Harvard students. They claim Zuckerburg agreed in November 2003 to finish “software and database work” for their site, ConnectU, but stalled through the process. Zuckerberg then launched his own site, Facebook. \nA suit was originally filed in 2004, but it was thrown out on a technicality. \nFacebook launched a few months before ConnectU in 2004, and has about 31 million users. ConnectU only has about 70,000, according to the Associated Press. The lawsuit claims that Facebook gained a considerable market advantage by launching in February of that year, instead of May, as ConnectU did.