After a long-running battle between social networking rivals, Facebook and ConnectU, the embarrasing episode may be coming to an end with Facebook (formerly ‘TheFacebook’) settling the case with ConnectU (formerly ‘Harvard Connection’) for an undisclosed amount.

The bitter row started after the founders of ConnectU accused Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook co-founders of stealing their lucrative idea for a campus based dating and networking site, which Facebook allegedly brought to fruition on the basis of the original idea and source code for ‘Harvard Connection’, while both parties were Harvard students back in 2003.

Facebook responded with a countersuit, citing unfair business practices, which has now been dropped as part of the settlement, which follows an order by a California federal judge that the two enter into mediation.

ConnectU argued that they hired Zuckerberg while he was sophomore at Harvard, and that he continuously delayed the progress of the project while working on his own competing start-up, TheFacebook, which brought about accusations of a clear conflict of interest from the founders of ConnectU/Harvard Connection, fueling rivalry between the two, and bringing to light the embarrassing fact that Facebook may not boast the innovative image it would like to project.

Divya Narendra, Cameron Winklevoss, and Tyler Winklevoss, the owners of the social networking website HarvardConnection, changed its name to ConnectU in September 2004 and filed a lawsuit against Facebook, alleging that Zuckerberg had illegally used source code intended for the website they asked him to build for them.

Facebook later requested that the court case that ConnectU filed against Facebook be thrown out of court, citing that ConnectU’s “broad brush allegations are unsupported by evidence.” The case was thrown out by a Boston district judge. After the court case filed by ConnectU against Facebook was dismissed 2007, ConnectU filed again against Facebook on March 11, 2008, continuing the case.