Paul Ceglia
A judge has ordered a man who claims to own half of social networking giant Facebook to return from Ireland to the US so he can produce storage devices that may contain evidence.
Paul Ceglia has reportedly been living in Galway as the lawsuit he initiated between him and Facebook continues, but his Irish uncle Frank Keaveney, based in Tuam, told the Connacht Tribune Ceglia is not lying low in Ireland and says he is not “on the run.”
The storage devices, which reportedly include a hard drive and five USB flash drives, are to be produced by 2 December, judge Leslie Foschip said. If the devices cannot be found, then Ceglia will have to provide the court with a sworn statement describing what happened to them.
Foschip also ordered Ceglia to agree that Facebook can access his logs and registration records pertaining to his MSN, Gmail and Hotmail accounts.
Ceglia reportedly moved to Ireland in August, from Wellsville, New York. The same month, Facebook’s lawyers claimed to have discovered documents showing that Ceglia – who claims to have a contract he signed in 2003 with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that entitles him to a majority ownership stake in Facebook – fabricated that contract.
Facebook said Ceglia was hired in 2003 for work on Zuckerberg’s StreetFax company, which was unrelated to the social network.
