The fightin' Winklevii have surrendered. Twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have decided not to take their battle with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to reports.
The Winklevoss twins, who along with business partner Divya Narendra have been engaged in a legal battle with Zuckerberg over their claim that Zuckerberg stole their idea for Facebook while all four were students at Harvard, on Wednesday filed papers with a Ninth Circuit appeals court in San Francisco saying that after "careful consideration," they would not be petitioning the Supreme Court.
Though the twins reached a settlement with Zuckerberg in 2008 that netted them $65 million, they continued to pursue a legal judgment against him. Shot down by the courts at every turn, the former Olympic rowers can take solace in the fact that the $45 million worth of private Facebook stock included in their original settlement is probably worth hundreds of millions today.
Meanwhile, Zuckerberg and Facebook continue to face a legal challenge from another claimant to ownership of the social networking giant, Paul Ceglia.
Ceglia claims to possess an contract with Zuckerberg from 2003 that confers a 50 percent stake in a project then called "The Facebook" in exchange for Ceglia's investment of $1,000, as well as other emails he claims corroborate his claim.
Facebook attorneys have labeled Ceglia a scam artist and called the contract a forgery. Ceglia last week said he had passed a lie-detector test that proved he was telling the truth.