The amount of money needed by Facebook for last year’s settlement with ConnectU, which was supposed to be confidential, was revealed yesterday by a law firm. According to the report, the company paid $65 million to its smaller competitor.

The incident was started in 2004 with the accusation made by ConnectU’s founders that their former Harvard University colleague, Facebook’s Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, stole their idea and created the popular social network. They claimed that Zuckerberg was hired as a programmer on their project and that he used their code and business model to create Facebook.

Yesterday’s mistake was made by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, which represented ConnectU in the trial. The law firm issued a newsletter presenting some of the details for its victory, which included the amount received in cash and stock options by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the twins who started ConnectU. Apparently, the law firm should receive over $10 million in fees from ConnectU, so there are still some aspects that need to be completed.

"Our PR people released something, and it didn't get caught by the people who knew," said Peter Calamari, a lawyer representing ConnectU. "We had a policy against commenting or talking publicly about this case," he added.

Even though Facebook’s valuation at this point is significantly lower than the $15 billion announced at the time of Microsoft’s $240 million investment, the settlement represents a great deal for the company, which will be able to put the incident behind and focus on its future projects.