Confidential information that was obtained on Wednesday from court documents showed that Facebook Incorporated’s appraisal had set the company’s value above the $15 billion market value entailed in a 2007 investment made by Microsoft Corporation.

A transcript of a court hearing that was closed to the public, which was held in June, revealed that the lawyers involved in an argument concerning a legal settlement had stated that Facebook's own appraisal had put the $8.88 per share price tag on its privately held stock.

The above-mentioned amount translated as a market value of approximately $3.7 billion for the company.

Facebook, which currently operates the largest social network on the Internet, made the appraisal after it had clinched a deal with Microsoft back in October 2007, whereas the company had agreed to sell a 1.6 percent stake to the Redmond-based tech giant for $240 million, a measure entailed by a broader advertising partnership with Microsoft.

The investment made by Microsoft involved that Facebook’s stock valued $35.90 per share, an amount that was used in settling a lawsuit in which the company’s founder Mark Zuckerberg had been accused that he had stolen the idea of an online social network from three former classmates who had started another social network called ConnectU. The latter, Divya Narendra and twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, refused to settle in March last year after they had found out that Facebook had valued its common stock at approximately one quarter of what the Microsoft investment had made it out to be worth.

Nevertheless, U.S. District Judge James Ware ruled in favor of the settlement, even though ConnectU had claimed that it had been misled with regards to the true value of Facebook's stock.