Paul Ceglia claims he is a fifty-percent owner of social networking giant Facebook, which is reportedly worth $50 billion. Ceglia claims he and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg formed a partnership in 2003, although only in 2010 did he initiate litigation to press his claim.

According to the lawsuit, he pair met through Craigslist when Ceglia hired Zuckerberg to help him with a street-mapping project. Zuckerberg contends the $1,000 contract was for the mapping development project only and had nothing to do with Facebook.

Ceglia disagrees. He claims he paid Zuckerberg $1,000 for the street-mapping project and an additional $1,000 for development of an online yearbook idea that Zuckerberg had told him about. According to the lawsuit, their contract provided that Ceglia would own half of the business if it got off the ground.

Zuckerberg's attorneys have maintained since the lawsuit was filed that Ceglia's claims are completely unfounded. They cite the fact that Ceglia waited seven years to file his suit as indicative that he lacks any legitimate claim. They have also accused Ceglia of fabricating e-mails and altering the street-mapping contract to include references to Facebook.

Zuckerberg's attorneys now say they have "smoking gun" evidence that Ceglia's claims to Facebook are a farce. Unfortunately, the details of the documents supporting the alleged "smoking gun" have been sealed by the court due to confidentiality claims filed by Ceglia. Zuckerberg's attorneys assert that Ceglia's confidentiality claim was filed only to prevent the public from being allowed to see Facebook's evidence proving his claims are false. Ceglia's attorneys insist the confidentiality claims are appropriate in light of proprietary information that could be revealed.

Source: Buffalo News, "Facebook claims it has proof in Ceglia suit," Susan Schulman and Tim