How Could the Winklevoss Twins Have Legally Prevented Anyone from Stealing their Facebook Idea

Question

Please give me legal, black-and-white answer.

Winklevoss Twins say someone stole their idea for Facebook and Judge awarded them some millions.

But how could have Winklevoss Twins protected themselves from being cheated in the beginning.

What legal things could they have in place so

1. They are not cheated to begin with (hence get credit for their idea)

2. If programmer decides to cheat them anyway, the case is open-and-shut and Judge rules in their favor without case dragging for years.

On the flip side, let say programmer did in fact create Facebook.

How does programmer legally protect himself from people who claim idea was stolen, takes him to court, and ends up paying the accuser (even though the idea was his from the start)?

Answer 1

You are leaving big parts of what happened out. The twins came to Zuckerberg and asked him to make a social network. He then made what is now Facebook, from his own design of how a social network should work. To me, your question makes it sound like they came to him with the whole design and he took it.

The courts are the way you make sure no one steals from you. Yeah, it's not fun to go to court sometimes, but that is supposed to be the last resort. You aren't supposed to go willy nilly.

Anyone can file suit though, so you can't really prevent people from doing so. There isn't really a way that anyone knows of to weed out the bad from the good without having the court decide.