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Facebook has hired the former chief of staff to onetime U.S. Attorney Alberto Gonzales as its general counsel, according to the Los Angeles Times. Ted Ullyot, currently a Washington, D.C.-based partner for the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, will relocate to the Bay Area and join the Palo Alto social network next month.

He appears to have been hand-picked by Elliot Schrage, the former Google executive who joined Facebook as vice president of communications and public policy this spring, and Sheryl Sandberg, another Google alum who now serves as the company's chief operating officer.

Ullyot "has an extraordinary combination of private legal practice and public sector experience," Schrage told the Los Angeles Times. "So many of the legal issues we face touch on both of those arenas. He is equally comfortable helping us expand internationally as he is in helping us navigate complicated legal issues we may face in Washington. Ted's arrival really demonstrates we're a little more grown-up."

"Grown up" is a necessity for Facebook's image these days; founder Mark Zuckerberg is only 24, and after the public relations clusterbomb that was the "Beacon" advertising program, it was clear that some more seasoned executives had to be brought on board.

Ted Ullyot

(Credit: Kirkland & Ellis)

Ullyot joins Facebook fewer than six months into his stint at Kirkland & Ellis, though he had been at the law firm from 1996 to 2002 before serving as general counsel for AOL Time Warner Europe out of the company's London office and then general counsel for the Greenwich, Conn.-based ESL Investments, the billion-dollar hedge fund founded by Edward Lampert.

Between 2003 and 2005, Ullyot occupied a number of positions in the federal government, including chief of staff of the Department of Justice and associate counsel to President George W. Bush. Most famously, he handled the federal government's response to the headline-grabbing Valerie Plame CIA leak.

"Ted has extremely strong connections with the Republican party, and we think that's a good thing," Schrage told the Times. COO Sandberg, on the other hand, has political experience from the other side of the aisle: she served as chief of staff to former President Bill Clinton's Department of the Treasury.

Like many of Facebook's top executives, Ullyot attended Harvard University, where the social network was birthed in Zuckerberg's dorm room in 2004. Ullyot obtained his undergraduate degree from the elite college in 1989, two years ahead of Sandberg; an old Harvard Crimson article hints that he competed on the cross-country team. In addition to Sandberg and Zuckerberg (who dropped out to work on Facebook full-time), Schrage is also a Harvard graduate--he obtained his law degree there.

Some of Facebook's most famous legal problems have their roots at Harvard, too. The founders of ConnectU, the would-be social network that only recently settled a years-old intellectual property suit against Zuckerberg, were members of the class of 2004.

As twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss power toward Wednesday's semifinal in the rowing events of the Olympics in Beijing, their longstanding court case against Facebook is winding down.

A San Jose, Calif., judge ruled late last week that ConnectU, the start-up that the brothers founded with Harvard classmate Divya Narendra, must transfer its stock to Facebook as part of the settlement acquisition by Tuesday, despite the claims on behalf of ConnectU that Facebook failed to disclose its true valuation when negotiating the terms of the settlement. The start-up's founders alleged fraud on Facebook's part, and claimed that irreparable harm would ensue from the settlement going through in its present form.

Facebook had been valued on paper at $15 billion when Microsoft took a $240 million stake last November. But that valuation was specific to Microsoft's preferred stock and the business deal surrounding it, Facebook said. Its real valuation is between $3 billion and $4 billion--reports place it at $3.75 billion.

Judge James Ware ruled last Friday that while ConnectU's appeal can be heard, the settlement has to go through first. "The longer the court delays in enforcing the settlement between the parties, the more likely the value of the consideration subject of the settlement (i.e. the value of the stock of each company) will change," Ware wrote in his ruling. "This means that the status quo cannot be preserved with a stay."

Ware originally rejected claims of fraud in June, prompting the appeal.

ConnectU's founders are slated to receive a mixture of cash and Facebook stock as part of the settlement. They originally sued Facebook in 2004, claiming that founder Mark Zuckerberg had swiped their code and business plan after being employed as a ConnectU software developer.

Scandal fans, rejoice--the crimson-hued nastiness between ConnectU and Facebook ain't over yet!

Court documents filed on Wednesday reveal that the founders of ConnectU, who claim that Facebook czar Mark Zuckerberg pilfered their business plan and code, are touting new "smoking-gun" evidence against the 24-year-old billionaire.

Facebook settled ConnectU v. Facebook in April, but ConnectU founders Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra say a search for related documents has produced some results.

Forensic expert Jeff Parmet was commissioned by ConnectU to trawl through Facebook hard drives after a court order opened them up for discovery in September.

Under an agreement that he would not discuss anything with ConnectU except developer code, Parmet produced a collection of documents to Massachusetts district court judge Douglas P. Woodlock that included the aforementioned instant-messaging logs.

But Woodlock's response was one of skepticism, especially considering that ConnectU had already signed the paperwork to settle the longstanding lawsuit. The three founders, who attended Harvard University alongside Zuckerberg, have been engaged in legal action against Facebook since 2004.

Documents filed Monday reveal that ConnectU also hired a new lawyer, D. Michael Underhill of the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner. The settlement is set to be approved June 23 in a court in San Jose, Calif., which is dealing with Facebook's countersuit against ConnectU that alleged its founders hacked Facebook's code to mine its member directory.

Facebook representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.

Earlier on Monday, reports surfaced that Facebook may be close to a settlement on its longstanding legal dispute with former rival ConnectU, after several years of dismissals, appeals, and general unpleasantry. But a recent court ruling suggests that the timing may not be entirely random: a judge in a U.S. court of appeals ruled that ConnectU was allowed to reinstate its case, reversing Facebook's request for dismissal.

Documents filed last Thursday from ConnectU vs. Zuckerberg et al., which has been handled in a Massachusetts district court, reveal that a senior circuit judge in the court of appeals opted to allow ConnectU to reinstate its case.

"We hold that the jurisdictional claim in the amended complaint warrants full consideration and constitutes a viable hook on which federal jurisdiction can be hung," the court document read. "Because this holding is at odds with the conclusions reached by the court below, we reverse the order of dismissal and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion."

ConnectU founders Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra had originally filed suit against Facebook's founders in September 2004, claiming that CEO Mark Zuckerberg had nabbed their code and business plan while employed as a programmer for ConnectU when all four were students at Harvard. Also named in the suit were four early Facebook employees as well as the Facebook corporation itself.

In July, the Massachusetts court had requested that ConnectU present more concrete evidence to support its case, indicating that the would-be social-networking site didn't have enough of an argument against Facebook. Facebook, meanwhile, argued that ConnectU's claims were moot and requested that the case be dismissed.

But in the documents filed Thursday, the appeals court decision ruled clearly in favor of ConnectU. "Although the defendants have advanced other arguments, those arguments are either unavailing, or inadequately developed, or both," the ruling read. "We reject them out of hand and, for the reasons elucidated above, we reverse the order of dismissal."

You're likely to be disappointed, those of you who were secretly hoping for an over-the-top, preppies-gone-nasty legal battle between Facebook's founders and the former Harvard classmates who claimed they filched their business plan.

The Facebook-ConnectU legal battle was tinged with Ivy League treachery, but it looks like we won't get a 'Skulls'-worthy story out of this one.

(Credit: Universal Pictures)

According to Brad Stone of the New York Times, Facebook is reportedly close to settling the lawsuit that the founders of onetime social-networking site ConnectU have been pursuing for several years now.

According to the founders of ConnectU, twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and their business partner Divya Narendra, they hired current Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a programmer for ConnectU when they were all students at Harvard. Zuckerberg, they claimed, stalled on his work at ConnectU as he created his own social-networking site, which then became Facebook. The ConnectU founders against Facebook in 2004, long before the site was as popular as it is today.

Facebook has retorted with allegations that ConnectU's suit is unfounded--as well as a countersuit claiming that ConnectU mined Facebook's user data to recruit more members. Indeed, the outlook has not been favorable for ConnectU, as a judge indicated in July that the side simply didn't have the evidence to back up its claims.

Thanks to his success with Facebook, Zuckerberg is now the youngest member of Forbes magazine's annual list of billionaires; ConnectU is largely forgotten, as Narendra now works in finance in New York and the Winklevoss twins are vying for spots on the U.S. Olympic crew team.

The Times blog post on Monday did not provide much detail, but said that Facebook was "finalizing a settlement" with the ConnectU founders and that legal documents pertaining to the case dismissal should appear within a few weeks.

The lengthy legal fight between social-networking scion Facebook and onetime rival ConnectU isn't over yet. New developments in the dispute on Wednesday probed deeper into the question of exactly what happened in 2004, when both sites were early-stage start-ups run essentially out of Harvard University dorm rooms.

The best-known component of the court drama has been ConnectU's allegation that Zuckerberg pilfered the former's business plan while he was a student at Harvard with ConnectU founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (they're twins) and Divya Narendra. In a San Jose, Calif., courtroom on Wednesday, however, the conversation turned to a countersuit.

Facebook had filed suit in the Northern District of California in 2005, claiming that ConnectU-employed programmers had hacked into Facebook in 2004 in order to obtain e-mail addresses that it could use for ConnectU invitations.

In Wednesday's motion hearing, ConnectU attorney Scott Mosko asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard Seeborg to dismiss Facebook's countersuit, according to a local ABC News story. Facebook attorney I. Neel Chatterjee responded that ConnectU co-founder Cameron Winklevoss had been "deeply involved" in the alleged hacking scheme.

Seeborg concluded the hearing by saying he would issue a decision in the future. He did not specify a date.

BOSTON--The judge's message Wednesday to ConnectU over its intellectual property lawsuit against fellow social-networking site Facebook was clear: show us the evidence.

ConnectU, which accuses Facebook of stealing its ideas, has been in legal pursuit of its rival, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and early employees Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum and Christopher Hughes for nearly three years, and there still isn't an end in sight.

Massachusetts Federal Judge Douglas P. Woodlock repeatedly stressed that there was simply not enough evidence to back up allegations that Zuckerberg, who had performed programming work for ConnectU while it was in development, had pilfered the start-up's business model and code. Facebook now boasts more than 30 million members worldwide, while ConnectU stands at well under 100,000.

Read the rest of the CNET News.com story here.

BOSTON--A federal judge in a Massachusetts district court gave the founders of college-based social networking site ConnectU two weeks to revise the complaint that they have filed against Facebook, its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and four other early employees of the fast-growing social network. The ConnectU founders, twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and their fellow 2004 Harvard graduating classmate Divya Narendra, have accused Zuckerberg and his company of stealing their code and business plan when Zuckerberg was casually employed as a programmer for ConnectU in the 2003-2004 academic year.

Judge Douglas P. Woodlock, during the case's dismissal hearing on Wednesday afternoon, requested that the plaintiffs revise their complaint and refile it by August 8, after which point Facebook has an additional two weeks to file for a dismissal. The reason, the judge said, was that there simply was not a factual basis to the majority of the ten claims listed by ConnectU in its original complaint.

"You're really going to have to do this with particularity," Woodlock said to ConnectU's counsel, "because this is a most evanescent of explanations."

UPDATE: Facebook has released an official statement on the matter to the press: "We are pleased with the outcome of the hearing today. We continue to disagree with the allegations that Mark Zuckerberg stole any ideas or code to build Facebook. We intend to honor the judge's request not to comment further in the media and will continue to vigorously defend this case in court."