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According to the above Bloomberg Article: Ceglia claims his alleged contract, which refers to "The Face Book" was signed about nine months before Facebook was founded, the company said in court papers.

According to the NYT from 2007:http://nyti.ms/cC0HwJ "An e-mail message, circulated widely by Mr. Greenspan to Harvard students on Sept. 19, 2003, describes the newest feature of houseSYSTEM, as "The Face Book" an online system for quickly locating other students. The date was four months before Mr. Zuckerberg started his own site"

My question: did these two parties independently come up with an idea for "The Face Book" for Harvard and both pitched it to Zuckerberg? Seems odd at the very least on the face of things. Greenspan, if you can comment on this -- were you affiliated with Ceglia at all?

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The traditional Harvard freshman register is known as "The Facebook".

"Harvard Yearbook Publications is responsible for the creation and production of the Senior Yearbook as well as the Freshman Register (also known as the Facebook). The Freshman Register is an extremely useful hardbound reference book for freshmen that contains photographs, addresses, and secondary schools of class members."

(http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~yearbook/purchase/). Login: http://facebook.college.harvard.edu

Thanks for clearing that up on the name.

This is what it was known as at Brown as well - the Freshman Facebook. I think it's a fairly common name back East..

The term "Face Book" as a resource for seeing peoples names and a info along with a photo in a less formal yearbook-style setting is not new at all. My high school had a "Face book" in paperback form that was distributed at the beginning of the year to help folks get to know one another. That was in 2001. The Harvard site was merely an online version of this kind of flat, searchable list, with no user edittable content. You put in a name, major, or dorm, and it would show you a list of pictures of students that matched that search criteria. That's it. Much as I love tales of Zuckerberg sneakily stealing the idea for thefacebook.com, the Harvard site you mention was so basic that I'd say it's no more the precursor to facebook than any online yearbook or student directory.

Indeed. CMU sent me a freshman face book in 1992...

Hi.

I'd never heard of Ceglia until a few days ago. Mark certainly didn't tell me about him, just like he didn't tell me about the Winklevosses. By the time Mark talked to me in person he was already a member of houseSYSTEM's facebook.

Here's the timeline of events from my company's trademark proceedings which were filed based in part on the claim (at the time, which has now been settled) that "facebook" is a generic term, as others have discussed here.

http://www.thinkpress.com/authoritas/timeline.pdf

If Mark was toying with this idea in April, 2003 (as I was), then he only started really taking it seriously once he saw my progress, which I'd started on independently. Three days after we had dinner he registered thefacebook.com without telling me.

I don't think Ceglia is arguing that he came up with the idea--he was just funding Mark's idea. So essentially Mark and I thought up a solution for the lack of a universal face book at Harvard at the same time, but I actually made mine before he did, and then I asked him for help running it. He turned down my request and instead asked me for help with an unspecified idea, which I declined to help with since he wouldn't tell me anything and had just been disciplined for ignoring privacy issues I considered important.

"had just been disciplined for ignoring privacy issues I considered important"

Details?

http://www.thinkpress.com/authoritas/index.html?page=303

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creato...

I was at Harvard at the time. Everyone used/ knew the print face book and the internet was exploding so it doesn't sound at all odd for two people to have the idea of doing an "online face book".

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