Winklevoss twins finally settle with Facebook for £48 million

The Winklevoss twins, who have been engrained into the history of Facebook thanks to the movie The Social Network, have finally accepted a $65 million (£48 million) payout from Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.

This comes after the twins decided to re-ignite their feud with Facebook and Zuckerberg – who they initially claimed took the idea of the social network from them – by trying to undo the settlement they agreed on in 2008.

In April, however, this was turned down by the Supreme Court and while they were going to appeal in May the twins have now made the decision not to.

"After careful consideration [the] appellants no longer oppose issuance of the mandate, and have no objection to vacatur of the stay of issuance of mandate," said the filing.

Taking stock

The Winklevoss case is one of the more interesting in the tech world, given that it stems from Zuckerberg's time at Harvard with the twins.

Originally they accused Zuckerberg of breaking an 'oral contract' with the twins, where he said he would complete work with them on their university social network idea, the Harvard Connection. Instead of completing this website, Zuckerberg went on to make TheFacebook – a social networking site that was originally restricted to Harvard graduates.

One of the reasons not to appeal may be to do with the amount of stock on offer. The money bundle has been split as £12.5 million in cash, £28 million in stock.

With estimates that Facebook could well be worth £100 billion in 2012, that stock option is now looking a lot more favourable than it did back in 2008.