According to the Wall Street Journal, a New York man has filed a lawsuit against Facebook claiming to own an 84% stake in the company.



Paul D. Ceglia filed a suit in the Supreme Court of New York’s Allegany County on June 30, claiming that a 2003 contract signed between him and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg entitles him to a large stake in the company as well as monetary damages.



Judge Thomas Brown issued a temporary restraining order restricting the transfer of Facebook Inc.’s assets following the lawsuit.



Mr. Ceglia claims that he signed a contract with Mr. Zuckerberg on April 28, 2003, to design and develop a website which eventually turned into Facebook. The contract stated that Mr. Ceglia would pay a $1 000 fee and get a 50% stake in the product.



It was also stated that Mr. Ceglia would receive an additional 1% interest in the site for every day until it was completed after Jan 1, 2004.



In a statement, a spokesman for Facebook said that, “We believe this suit is completely frivolous and we will fight it vigorously”.



This isn’t the first time that Facebook has been faced with legal trouble, in September 2004, a rival social networking site; ConnectU filed a lawsuit against Zuckerburg alleging he stole the idea for Facebook from them.



The website has also been faced with numerous privacy lawsuits over its ever changing privacy policies.



In recent years Facebook has seen an explosion in growth and surpassed competitors like myspace.com to hold the title of largest social networking site. Facebook has more than 500 million registered users globally.



Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly worth an astonishing $4 billion according to Forbes magazine. If this case proves to be legitimate the social networking giant may be in some big trouble. Many investors, including Microsoft, who invested $240 million into the company may be keeping a weary eye on the proceedings.