The owners of a rival social networking website are trying to shut down Facebook, alleging the founder stole their ideas while they were students at Harvard.
The three founders of ConnectU are suing Mark Zuckerberg for fraud, copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets. The action asks the court to shut Facebook and give control of the company and its assets to ConnectU's founders.
Facebook has responded by asking a judge to dismiss the lawsuit. A hearing will be held today in Boston.
Facebook started in 2004, a few months before ConnectU went online, and now has 31 million users, compared with about 70,000 users for ConnectU, based in Greenwich, Connecticut. Last year, Facebook turned down a $500 million buyout offer from Yahoo.
A spokeswoman for Palo Alto, California-based Facebook declined to comment. But in court filings, Facebook's lawyers say ConnectU has no evidence for "broad-brush allegations" against Zuckerberg, and deny he pilfered his ideas for Facebook from his fellow Harvard students.
"Each of them had different interests and activities," they wrote. "Only one of them had an idea significant enough to build a great company. That one person was Mark Zuckerberg."
Facebook and ConnectU connect college students and others online. Both allow users to post profiles with pictures, biographies and other personal information and create extended networks of people at their schools or jobs or with similar interests.
ConnectU originally filed suit in 2004, but it was dismissed on a technicality and immediately refiled.