A US federal judge has delayed ruling on whether to throw out a lawsuit filed against the founder of Facebook.com, saying he needed more information about allegations that Mark Zuckerberg stole his ideas from the creators of a rival social networking website.

In Boston this week, Judge Douglas Woodlock gave ConnectU founders Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss - who are twin brothers - and Divya Narendra until August 8th to flesh out their allegations against Mr Zuckerberg, which include fraud, copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets.

The lawsuit, which also names several other founding members of Facebook, asks the court to issue an injunction against Facebook and give control of the company and its assets to ConnectU's founders.

Facebook said in a statement that it was pleased with the outcome of the hearing.

"We continue to disagree with the allegations that Mark Zuckerberg stole any ideas or code to build Facebook," the statement said. "We intend to honour the judge's request not to comment further in the media and will continue to vigorously defend this case in court."

ConnectU, based in Connecticut, originally filed its lawsuit in September 2004, but it was dismissed on a technicality in March and immediately refiled.

The lawsuit claims that, in December 2002, the ConnectU founders began to develop a social networking website for the Harvard community called Harvard Connection. In November 2003, the three asked Zuckerberg to complete software and database work on the website.

Zuckerberg launched Thefacebook.com in February 2004. ConnectU started its website in May of that year. By beating ConnectU to the market, Facebook gained a huge advantage, the lawsuit claims.