Next week Facebook will attempt to persuade a federal judge to toss out a three-year-old lawsuit filed by ConnectU, charging founder Mark Zuckerberg with stealing vital pieces of code and ideas from the social networking site developed by three of his Harvard classmates.

ConnectU is seeking an injunction that would shut down Facebook and transfer many of the company's assets to Zuckerberg's rivals.

Zuckerberg, who worked briefly for ConnectU in November of 2003, has denied the allegations, saying that he did six hours of voluntary coding for what was then called Harvard Connection, which he understood to be a personals page, not a social networking site.

Three months after leaving ConnectU, Zuckerberg founded Facebook.

Tyler Winklevoss, one of the three ConnectU plaintiffs told Times Online he does not believe Zuckerberg's explanation.

"It was clear to him what we wanted," Winklevoss said "He stalled us for months while he worked on his own idea, which he launched in February as an original idea."

The case, which was dismissed in March without a ruling on the merits, will now be heard in U.S. district court in Massachusetts on July 25.

In response to the complaint, Facebook has said: "Only one of the students had an idea significant enough to build a great company. That person was Mark Zuckerberg."

While rumors have persisted about Facebook being acquired, Zuckerberg has insisted that he wants to keep the company independent. However, some have speculated that neither an acquisition nor a rumored initial public offering will work in the face of a looming intellectual property fight, according to a report in BloggingStocks.com.