The five year-old website, which is now the biggest networking site in the world with more than 150 million registered users, has been involved in an ongoing legal battle since 2004 with ConnectU, a company founded by former friends of Zuckerberg at Harvard.
The pay-off was agreed last year but, until now, has not been disclosed. Divya Narendra and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss claim they asked Zuckerberg to write the code for their concept of a social networking website that would help students at Harvard stay in touch.
ConnectU said it deserved a substantial slice of the credit for Facebook, claiming it was worth $15bn based on Microsoft's decision to pay $240m for a 1.6% share in October 2007.
According to court documents, Facebook's lawyers tried to argue the site was in reality worth far less than the Microsoft stake suggested, in an attempt to reach a substantially lower settlement; valuing itself at $3.7bn.
Despite part of the deal involving that its details were kept confidential, this week, ConnectU's law firm, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, sent a newsletter to clients explaining how Facebook paid $20m and handed over 1.2 million shares of common stock, valued at $45m by the court.
The company has since said it had revealed the full details in error.
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