Facebook being sued for 'stealing' again - report

By Surbhi Chawla | Updated: 22 August 2012 10:53 IST

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High profile drama and controversies have never been too far away from Facebook. The social network is already in the midst of a challenging time where its new investors are agitated and perturbed about the falling share price stocks and future sources of revenues. On top of all this, a Chinese website is preparing ammunition to drag Facebook to court for its much-hyped Timeline feature.

Cubic Network claims that it had originally conceptualised the idea of this Timeline feature and also its name. It is all set to file a case against Facebook after being prompted to do so by some friendly US lawyers.

According to China Youth Daily, Harvard graduate Xiong Wanli started this website around four years ago and had later introduced Timeline feature on February 9, 2008. While Facebook has rolled out this feature only in 2011.

However, these are not the only complaints that the Chinese website operator has against this social network. He also claims Facebook's F8 developer conference logo too is very similar to Cubic's own logo.

What makes this case even more interesting is that, Xiong had once given a guest lecture at Stanford university about his Timeline feature and according to some reports it was attended by a certain M. Zuckerberg.

So looks like Facebook might soon find itself being dragged into another legal battle. It is noteworthy, that this is not the first time Facebook is being sued for stealing an idea. Even in 2004, the Winklevoss brothers had sued Mark Zuckerberg for stealing their ConnectU idea while creating Facebook.

Facebook had introduced Facebook Timeline feature in December last year and it had met with mixed reaction from its followers. There was some news in May 2012, that this social network might be looking at revamping the Timeline design but there has been no official word on the same so far. Will be interesting to see what is the outcome of this battle over Timeline.

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