1. Mark Zuckerberg used Leader white paper to build Facebook

Opinion: One blogger's perspective.

On July 26, 2011, Leader Technologies filed its Opening Brief in the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in the Leader Technologies Inc. v. Facebook Inc., 08-CV-862-JJF/LPS (D. Del. 2008) patent infringement fight.[1] See Leader Press Release, Jul. 26, 2011.

Initially Leader and inventor Michael McKibben were the subject of much sarcasm in the blogosphere. Numerous bloggers labelled them "patent trolls" and "squatters." Techdirt, Sep. 9th 2009 dismissed Leader's claims as a "publicity stunt" and VentureBeat, Nov. 19, 2008 said the claims were "impressively weak." See also AllFacebook.com, Nov. 19, 2008.

Verdict: Facebook "literally infringes" Leader's patent

To the contrary, Leader claims resulted in a jury decision that Facebook literally infringes 11 of 11 Leader patent claims and that no published prior art exists. This part of the trial was a level playing field and was well-tested. Leader Opening Brief, Jul., 25, 2011, p. 3; also available at Leader. As Leader's appeal brief describes, the element of the verdict that Facebook "won" regarding alleged early commercial activity appears to have been the result of jury confusion surrounding Facebook's "court room theater" and personal attacks of Mr. McKibben's credibility in lieu of hard evidence. This part of the trial was not a level playing field and was the subject of considerable Facebook attorney "dark arts" tactics which Leader is seeking to have set aside by the Federal Circuit. See Facebook's trial conduct; See also Facebook's "I'm tired" tactic; Expert witness practices "dark arts;" No evidence. No problem. Fabricate it.; Missing Documents; Patent Office records disprove Facebook; Facebook's "court room theater."

As the facts emerge, the patchwork of Facebook origin stories is finally starting to address the previously unanswered elephant-in-the-room question: How can a complete platform be conceived, researched, designed, written, edited, debugged and staged in under two weeks, by one person, while taking a full class load and studying for finals?

It now appears that: (1) as asserted by Leader, Mark Zuckerberg hacked his platform technology ideas from Leader Technologies' white papers (he testified that he did not remember the "other" sources for Facebook, but that he never saw the Leader white papers), and garnered the "faces" ideas from three sources: (2) the Winklevoss twins (ConnectU), (3) Aaron Greespan (houseSYSTEM) and (4) even the Harvard administration. Mr. Zuckerberg only vaguely admits to "other" sources while adamently denying each and every specific source put forward. This should be no surprise since Mr. Zuckerberg boasted to Wired magazine that "one good hacker can be as good as 10 or 20 engineers" (cited below) and recently hired hacker George Hotz who broke into Sony PlayStation servers; an incident that cost the company $25 million.[4] See Wired, Apr. 19, 2010; Hollywood Reporter, Jun. 28, 2011.

Another set of facts is that the Leader patent application published on June 24, 2004 and Mark Zuckerberg testified in the ConnectU case that he hired Steven Dawson Haggerty to build the "groups functionality" during that same time in the summer of 2004. The Leader patent application specifically describes Leader's groups context innovations (references below). According to The Harvard Crimson, this groups feature is what accelerated Facebook's popularity from a singular student profile to an interactive system. "New Facebook Groups Abound," The Harvard Crimson, Dec. 3, 2004.

Much of the new information referenced here is sourced from the U.S. District Court's PACER website.[6] Click the link here for instructions on sign up and access: The case caption is Leader Technologies Inc. v. Facebook Inc., 08-CV-862-JJF/LPS (D. Del. 2008). See How to Access PACER.

The court documents reveal how Mark Zuckerberg was able to accelerate from 0-to-60 mph in "one or two weeks" while studying for his Harvard finals to start Facebook on February 4, 2004. The idea for the student facebook was already known at Harvard from three well-documented sources prior to Mr. Zuckerberg: (1) the Winklevoss twins' ConnectU,[1] (2) Aaron Greenspan's houseSYSTEM,[2] and (3) from the Harvard computer administration.[3] And, if Leader Technologies ("Leader") is right, Mr. Zuckerberg lifted the ideas for the structure of the platform from Leader Technologies' patent pending white papers, one published on October 22, 2003, along with Leader's first patent publication on June 24, 2004—exactly when Mr. Zuckerberg says "Steven Dawson Haggerty" was hired to build the "groups functionality" which is disclosed in the Leader patent publication.[4][5][6][7]

[1] Nicholas Carlson. "At Last -- The Full Story Of How Facebook Was Founded." Business Insider, Mar. 5, 2010. Accessed Jul. 15, 2011.

[2] Aaron Greenspan. "Aaron's Answers about houseSYSTEM." Quora, Oct. 4, 2010. Accessed Jul. 16, 2011.

[3] David M. Kaden. "College Inches Toward Campus-Wide Facebook." The Harvard Crimson, Dec. 9, 2003. Accessed Jul. 16, 2011.
[4] Mark Zuckerberg Deposition. The Facebook vs. ConnectU, April 25, 2006. Accessed Aug. 1, 2011.

[5] Leader Technologies, Inc.'s Counter-Statement of Disputed Facts, Leader Technologies, Inc., v. Facebook, Inc., 08-cv-861-JJF, Jun. 11, 2010. Accessed Aug. 2, 2011.

[6] Michael McKibben. "White Paper: Leader2Leader® — What convergence was meant to be." Leader Technologies®/archive.org, Oct. 22, 2003; Leader v. Facebook, Doc. No. 477, Ex. 28. Accessed Aug. 2, 2011.

[7] Katherine M. Gray. "New Facebook Groups Abound." The Harvard Crimson, Dec. 3, 2004. Accessed Aug. 3, 2011.

• Leader inventor Michael McKibben’s son Max lived in Winthrop House, the dormitory next to Mark Zuckerberg's Kirkland House where Mr. Zuckerberg's now infamous hacking, depicted in The Social Network movie, was carried out. See Mark Zuckerberg Oct. 28, 2003 Online Hacking Diary; See The Social Network Hacking Scene, YouTube; See also Harvard campus map showing the proximity of Winthrop House and Kirkland House .
  
• Four (4) emails between Leader inventor Michael McKibben and his Harvard son Max dated between April 21, 2003 and January 13, 2004 are identified in the joint evidence list. These dates predate the founding of Facebook on February 4, 2004. See Proposed Joint Evidence List, May 27, 2010, PTX 776-779, p. 17. The contents of these emails are not known at the present time since this "willfulness" evidence has not yet entered the case.
  
• Mark Zuckerberg hacked into the Harvard student house site servers and email accounts multiple times. See Mark Zuckerberg Oct. 28, 2003 Online Hacking Diary; Nicholas Carlson. "In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg Broke Into A Facebook User's Private Email," Business Insider, Mar. 5, 2010.
• Mark Zuckerberg stated that “one good hacker can be as good as 10 or 20 engineers.” Wired, Apr. 19, 2010.
  
• Leader invested 145,000 man-hours and over $10 million to develop the initial concept and build a working embodiment of the technology. Leader Opening Brief, Jul. 25, 2011, p. 6; also available at Leader.
  
• Mark Zuckerberg testified to have built the first version of Facebook in “one or two weeks” while studying for finals in January 2004. Mark Zuckerberg ConnectU Deposition, Apr. 25, 2006, Tr. 41:3-42:1; Tr. 42:17-20; Tr. 82:3-7.
  
• Mark Zuckerberg stated in ConnectU testimony that he could not remember his “other” sources for his ideas for Facebook, and testified in Leader v. Facebook that Leader’s white papers were not among those “other” sources. Mark Zuckerberg ConnectU Deposition, Apr. 25, 2006, Tr. 36:17-22.
  
• Leader published a white paper on its invention on October 22, 2003. Mark Zuckerberg hacked the Harvard House sites on October 28, 2003, six days later. Leader White Paper, Oct. 22, 2003, Archive.org, cited in Leader v. Facebook, Doc. No. 477, Ex. 28, Oct. 22, 2003.
• From Oct. 23, 2003 to Sep. 15, 2004 The Harvard Crimson carried 22 news articles about sophomore Mark Zuckerberg. Only Bill Clinton and George Bush received more mentions. Al Franken received 16, Google 14, Microsoft 10, Bill Gates and Pope John Paul II 3 each. By comparison, the two other facebooks at Harvard, namely the Winklevoss Twins' ConnectU and Aaron Greenspan's houseSYSTEM, received 4 mentions each. What follows are links to the 22 articles.

1. Oct. 23, 2003, S.F. Brickman, Not-so-artificial Intelligence
2. Nov. 04, 2003, Bari M. Schwartz, Hot or Not? Website Briefly Judges Looks
3. Nov. 06, 2003, S.F. Brickman, Face Off - New web venture not so hot
4. Nov. 19, 2003. Katharine A. Kaplan, Facemash Creator Survives Ad Board
5. Dec. 09, 2003, David M. Kaden, College Inches Toward Campus-Wide Facebook
6. Dec. 11, 2003, The Crimson Staff, Put on a Happy Face
7. Feb. 09, 2004, Alan J. Tabak, Hundreds Register for New Facebook Website
8. Feb. 17, 2004, Amelia E. Lester, Show Your Best Face
9. Feb. 18, 2004, Alan J. Tabak, Harvard Bonds on Facebook Website
10. Mar. 01, 2004, Adam P. Schneider, Facebook Expands Beyond Harvard
11. Mar. 09, 2004, Leon Neyfakh, Columbia Rebukes thefacebook.com
12. Mar. 11, 2004, The Crimson Staff, Manifest Destiny, Facebook Style
13. Mar. 15, 2004, Matthew A. Gline, CrimsonPartiesHookupExchange.com
14. Mar. 18, 2004, Sarah E.F. Milov, Sociology of thefacebook.com
15. Mar. 19, 2004, Anastasios G. Skalkos, New Online Facebook Launched
16. May 07, 2004, M. Grynbaum, Online Facebook Solicits New Ads
17. May 28, 2004, T.J. Mcginn, “Online Facebooks Duel Over Tangled Web of Authorship
18. Jun. 10, 2004, Elena Sorokin, Internet Boosts Social Scene
19. Jun. 10, 2004, M. Grynbaum, Zuckerberg ’06: The whiz behind thefacebook.com
20. Aug. 13, 2004, Alan J. Tabak, Zuckerberg Programs New Website
21. Sep. 13, 2004, T.J. Mcginn, Lawsuit Threatens To Close Facebook 
22. Sep. 15, 2004, The Crimson Staff, Facing Off Over The Facebook

• Leader's patent first published on June 24, 2004. Mark Zuckerberg testified in ConnectU that the "groups functionality" was programmed into Facebook during the summer of 2004 by "Steven Dawson Haggerty." The Harvard Crimson says Facebook became much more popular with users of the "Groups" were introduced. Mark Zuckerberg ConnectU Deposition, Apr. 25, 2006, Tr. 90:11-91:18.
• Also "by the end of the summer" (NOTE: this is  at the same time as the Leader patent "groups" disclosure), Peter Thiel invested $500,000 in Facebook according to an Accel press release.
• Accel Partners' CEO James Breyer invested $12.7 million in April 2005 and became a Facebook board member while also serving on the Board of the Associates of the Harvard Business School, and serving as the former chairman of the Harvard Business School California Research Center. According to an Accel press release, Mr. Breyer said in a Stanford Business School interview that he did not meet Mr. Zuckerberg until the fall of 2004 at Palo Alto's Village Pub after Mr. Zuckerberg moved to California.
• Facebook's defense relied solely on discrediting inventor Michael McKibben as its evidence of early commercial activity. Facebook provided no expert testimony, no source code, no engineering documents, no Leader engineer testimony, no third party testimony. Leader Opening Brief, Jul., 25, 2011, p. 16; also available at Leader.
  
• Facebook's attorneys admitted to the judge that they could not meet their burden without getting access to Leader's source code. However, after being granted access to login to Leader2Leader and access to the full Leader source code, Facebook produced no Leader source code at trial to prove the early commercial activity. Leader inventor Michael McKibben says that is because the programmer notations in the Leader source code prove they are wrong. Leader Press Release, Jul. 26, 2011.

Aaron Greenspan, the creator of one of the rival facebooks at Harvard called houseSYSTEM had this to say about the uncanny "student-rebel-hero" coverage that fellow geek Mark Zuckerberg received:

"The Crimson would run a front-page article on Mark and his site . . . The coverage was always the same and unequivocally positive . . . It was as if 14-year-old girls (with bad vision...) had taken over the newspaper on Plympton Street." Authoritas, Think Press, p. 292.

Dubious Origin Stories

The various Facebook origin stories are suspect. Mr. Zuckerberg testified in ConnectU that he alone built the Facebook site in "one or two weeks" while studying for finals in January 2004. A reasonable programmer knows that this claim is not credible, and wildly so. He testified that he never saw Leader's white papers, although the similarities are mathematically impossible without copying.

A reasonable person also sees the evident presence of an influential business figure behind the scenes—someone with an impressive ability to affect the news coverage priorities of The Harvard Crimson. No such influential person has ever been identified in the Facebook creation stories. According to the Accel Partners' press release cited above, no West Coast venture capitalists with influential Harvard contacts knew Mr. Zuckeberg at the time of the The Harvard Crimson coverage.

A reasonable person can see that without business and media help, hacking, theft, co-opting of the facebook ideas floating around campus, and copying of Leader's white papers, Mr. Zuckerberg alone could not have started Facebook on Feb. 4, 2004 while taking a full class load.

* * *