The bitter fight between a group of former Harvard University students and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is over after a federal judge in California ruled that a settlement reached by the warring parties is enforceable.

US District Court Judge James Ware in San Jose ordered the plaintiffs, former Harvard University classmates of Zuckerberg, to honour the settlement of undisclosed cash and Facebook stock they agreed to in February.

The parties - including the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler, and their partner Divya Narendra - are scheduled to meet on 2 July to determine the details of the settlement.
 
They had earlier sued Zuckerberg alleging that he stole their idea after they hired him to work on a Web site that eventually became ConnectU while they were all Harvard undergraduates.

Zuckerberg started Facebook in February 2004 shortly after abandoning his work for the trio, according to court documents. He dropped out of Harvard a few months later and moved Facebook to Silicon Valley.

Zuckerberg and the three men reached a settlement, but the ConnectU founders later balked, accusing Zuckerberg and other Facebook officials of lying to them about the value of the company, which boasts 80 million users worldwide.

The judge didn't disclose the board's valuation in the order he issued Wednesday night. He only said it was "a different value" than the previously disclosed one made in October when Microsoft Corp. invested $240 million for a 1.6 per cent stake in Facebook, which implied a $15 billion valuation. Facebook is privately held.

Zuckerberg is now believed to be worth $1.5 billion, based on his Facebook holdings, according to Forbes magazine's rankings of the world's richest people. At 24, he is the youngest person on the list.

Ware said he didn't find that Facebook made any misrepresentations during settlement negotiations and noted the plaintiffs are "sophisticated business parties who were represented by reputable counsel."

The terms of the settlement, which involved an award of cash and Facebook stock to the Winklevoss group, was ordered sealed by Judge Ware.

The dispute was complicated because there was litigation in two venues - in California and Massachusetts - and there have been suggestions that attorneys have been jockeying for position in the case.

Facebook said it considers the case closed. In a statement, the popular social networking firm said, "The ConnectU founders understood the deal they made, and we are gratified that the court rejected their false allegations of fraud. Their challenge was simply a case of 'buyers' remorse,' as described by the Boston Court earlier this month."

In a follow-up statement issued later, Facebook claimed that the dispute over the settlement wasn't about fraud; it was about ConnectU and its lawyers at Quinn Emanuel. ''We were disappointed that we had to litigate the settlement, as we believed we were caught in the middle of a fee dispute between ConnectU's founders and its former counsel,'' the statement read.

In April, ConnectU fired one of the law firms representing it, according to court documents. The law firm, Quin, Emanuel, Urquhart, Oliver & Hedges, filed court papers on 24 April claiming part of the settlement for unpaid attorney fees. At the same time, Quinn Emanuel filed a lien against anything ConnectU got from Facebook, to cover its fees and costs.