The story of the guy who claims to hold a contract that means he owns 84% of Facebook keeps getting stranger. We already noted that Facebook's first official response in court was to say that it was unsure if Mark Zuckerberg signed the contract (which comes close to indicating they think he did...) but TechCrunch points us to an interview with the guy, Paul Ceglia, where it's also revealed that someone else now thinks they may actually hold the rights to that contract. Seriously.
Basically, when Ceglia hired Zuckerberg to do some work for him, in the contract that allegedly includes this ownership stake in Facebook, Ceglia was allegedly working for someone else. The article talks to a guy named Andrew Logan, who ran a competing service to the one that Ceglia had hired Zuckerberg to build. However, Ceglia was actually trying to set up that company while working for Logan, and Logan says that anything Ceglia got, he owns:
If you're playing along with the home game, this has to be at least the fifth or sixth person to claim they actually owned some large chunk of Facebook, but this time it's because of a bizarre contract Zuckerberg may have signed with a guy who had hired Zuckerber to program a totally unrelated project... and that guy was supposedly secretly building a competitor to the product of the company who employed him. So that employer now says that any rights to Facebook in that contract belong to him. If I didn't know any better, I'd almost assume this level of insanity was actually planted as marketing material for that fictional Facebook movie coming out this fall.
Separately, it is worth noting that the interview with Ceglia allows him to give a reason why he waited this long to point out this contract. He claims he totally forgot about it. The only reason it came up is because Ceglia is in a legal fight with New York over taking $200,000 from customers of a wood-pellet fuel business and never delivering any wood pellets. In the process of defending himself, he apparently went through some boxes of old files... where he claims to have found the contract.
Separately, after all this came to pass, Ceglia finally signed up for his first Facebook account:
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Basically, when Ceglia hired Zuckerberg to do some work for him, in the contract that allegedly includes this ownership stake in Facebook, Ceglia was allegedly working for someone else. The article talks to a guy named Andrew Logan, who ran a competing service to the one that Ceglia had hired Zuckerberg to build. However, Ceglia was actually trying to set up that company while working for Logan, and Logan says that anything Ceglia got, he owns:
"We're going to lay claim that I own it," said Logan. "He was under contract to me."Apparently the two were involved in a legal dispute over this in the past, and Logan's lawyers are reviewing the settlement agreement.
If you're playing along with the home game, this has to be at least the fifth or sixth person to claim they actually owned some large chunk of Facebook, but this time it's because of a bizarre contract Zuckerberg may have signed with a guy who had hired Zuckerber to program a totally unrelated project... and that guy was supposedly secretly building a competitor to the product of the company who employed him. So that employer now says that any rights to Facebook in that contract belong to him. If I didn't know any better, I'd almost assume this level of insanity was actually planted as marketing material for that fictional Facebook movie coming out this fall.
Separately, it is worth noting that the interview with Ceglia allows him to give a reason why he waited this long to point out this contract. He claims he totally forgot about it. The only reason it came up is because Ceglia is in a legal fight with New York over taking $200,000 from customers of a wood-pellet fuel business and never delivering any wood pellets. In the process of defending himself, he apparently went through some boxes of old files... where he claims to have found the contract.
Separately, after all this came to pass, Ceglia finally signed up for his first Facebook account:
After he filed his lawsuit, Ceglia did take enough interest in the company to sign up for a Facebook account on July 22, his birthday.
"I think it's a great service," he said.
Like many of the 500 million people who use Facebook, Ceglia said he's gotten back in touch with some old high school friends.
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