Will Facebook ever be rid of the Winklevoss twins?" Yes, on the legal front, this is likely to end sooner rather than later at this point, as the appeal by the

Will Facebook ever be rid of the Winklevoss twins?" Yes, on the legal front, this is likely to end sooner rather than later at this point, as the appeal by the twins from the lower court judgment ordering that the settlement be enforced has not been well received by the panel hearing the appeal (see link, with my associated comment, from a couple of days ago to a story analyzing the judges' comments during the oral argument: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2096370 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2096370). I will restate here from my prior comment what the stakes are on this appeal: "In my view, the last major legal cloud that hangs over Facebook is the appeal by ConnectU and the Winklevoss brothers of a federal court decision upholding a settlement between them and FB of their claims that Mr. Zuckerberg had allegedly stolen their ideas to form the company. With that settlement in place, those parties received what many considered a windfall ($20M cash and 1.2 shares of FB stock, originally valued at $45M and now estimated to be worth $150M). Should it be set aside, however, the settlement value of such claims today would be astronomical. Why? Because these claims (unlike those of Mr. Ceglia, who filed a claim nearly seven years after the fact claiming an "84% stake in Facebook") were timely brought and have overhung every round of financing that FB has done from the beginning. In other words, existing FB shareholders have at all times been aware, in making their investment, of the risk that they could potentially lose everything should ConnectU prevail in its claims to own the FB IP. That is a devastating outcome for FB shareholders, of course, but the claimants here (unlike Mr. Ceglia) cannot be accused of laches or foot-dragging in ways that make the timing of their claims inequitable and therefore unenforceable. Thus, should they get this settlement set aside, FB would be faced with years of future litigation during which a serious question mark would hang over the entire value of its company. Hence, no IPO; hence, a far higher cost of any financing down the road. The stakes are high in this case." Money, then, would appear to be the main driving element here. By playing with house money, the twins stand to gain by continuing to leverage their legal threats. That is why this whole thing has taken on a Terminator-like quality. In the end, they will either run out of legal leverage or they will be paid off. Time will tell on which it will be but I doubt that they will back off gracefully regardless of any windfall they might have already received.