These are the guys suing Zuckerberg. Ivy League competitve rowers who can’t/won’t write code.

Put yourself in Mark’s shoes. You’re a geeky kid who learned to code, maybe reads Slashdot and are looking to do something cool on the web. These jocks notice a thing you made and say they want your help with their company. You get excited and agree.

You’ve spent lots of time on the web and have developed a very good sense of what a good website is, and as you look over their idea, you realize that this it is a start, but that you could do better. You wouldn’t use the site they drew up, but with some tweaks and a good UI, it has potential.

What do you do? Maybe you could go back to them and tell them how it could be done right.

Maybe you feel like they don’t have the touch and you do, so you don’t feel any obligation to fix their project, and instead opt to make your own.

Maybe they’re arrogant pricks who wouldn’t listen to you, and your sense of things is that if they don’t know how to code, tough shit for them. I have no idea of course, but a few things jump out:

They’re ivy league jocks supported by their dad.
They sunk $800,000 into the project through a web development firm (wow! where’d they get that? Why didn’t they do that to start with? Somehow I doubt Zuckerberg would have done this)

If this were a movie, they look the part of the guy that has everything, has no trouble getting laid, and gives Zuck a swirlie.

None of that proves anything but it does kind of fit an image, no?

The concept that “the idea” was defensible IP is laughable.

This case is going nowhere.