BOSTON— Inc., a popular social networking Web site, is headed to U.S. court Wednesday to try to quash allegations that its founder stole ideas for the company from a group of former Harvard University students.

The long-running legal battle revolves around accusations, strongly denied by Facebook, that Mark Zuckerberg stole ideas for Facebook after being hired as a Harvard sophomore by fellow students to write code for a site called Harvard Connection.

At issue in Wednesday’s largely procedural hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Douglas Woodlock is a motion by Facebook to force the former Harvard students to refine their legal claims or have portions of their lawsuit dismissed.

The case is in the spotlight due to the celebrity of 23-year-old Zuckerberg and the surging popularity of Facebook, one of Silicon Valley’s hottest start-up companies which has seen membership jump 25 percent to above 30 million since May.

Facebook is attracting intense speculation over whether it may be a takeover target by major Internet players or is still on course to seek an eventual initial public stock offering.

The lawsuit was first filed in September 2004 by ConnectU, a successor to Harvard Connection, against Facebook, Zuckerberg and his co-founders.

Thefacebook.com, as it was then known, was set up in early 2004 as a social site for students but had already spread to other U.S. college campuses, attracting hundreds of thousands of members by the time the lawsuit was first filed.

In the three years since then, the student phenomenon spread across the United States and the world. A year ago, Facebook, which has relocated to Palo Alto, California, opened up the site to members of all ages.

A separate California lawsuit filed in 2005 by Facebook against ConnectU alleges ConnectU hired programmers to hack into Facebook’s site, stole thousands of e-mail addresses and then contacted Facebook members to win them over to ConnectU.

No trial date has been set in either case, although extensive depositions have taken place. The original lawsuit by ConnectU was dismissed on a technicality but refiled in March.

A Facebook spokeswoman said the company does not comment on pending litigation.

Court papers filed by state that Zuckerberg agreed to work for Harvard Connection founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra, then dragged his feet before launching Thefacebook.com in February 2004.

The lawsuit alleges breach of contract and that Zuckerberg misappropriated trade secrets, among other complaints.

Attorneys for ConnectU did not return calls seeking comment. The Winklevoss brothers and ConnectU’s legal counsel, plan a news conference in Boston after Wednesday’s hearing, a spokeswoman said via e-mail.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 22 (UPI) — A study by Emerging Energy Research suggests U.S. wind power will reach a capacity of 49,000 megawatts by 2015.

The research predicts with 125 gigawatts of projects in the pipeline and $65 billion in estimated investments the U.S. wind industry could rank first internationally with 19 percent of the global industry, despite transmission bottlenecks.

“With greater certainty in the energy policy fundamentals underpinning U.S. wind growth potential, the U.S. market has become a core demand hub for global wind players across the value chain,” said Joshua Magee, EER senior analyst.

The study bases its projections on new transmission buildup around 2011 allowing high growth of about 5 gigawatts per year.

Rapid consolidation within the industry has created a competitive market, further driving growth and leading to turbine manufacturers opening in the United States. Growth has also been spurred by state renewable portfolio standards and the extension of the federal production tax credit.

“As annual U.S. wind development becomes increasingly dominated by companies with the right combination of green field experience, financial muscle and turbine supply,the race is on between major U.S. power players and European IPPs and utilities for U.S. market positioning,” Magee said.

PARIS: Less than a week after rebuffing French calls for a greater role for governments in setting European monetary policy, Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank, met with the French prime minister Wednesday for a “broad discussion” of economic issues.

“It was a very good meeting, allowing us to have a broad discussion,” Trichet said after the meeting with Franзois Fillon, although he declined to give any details about the discussion.

A spokeswoman for the prime ministers office declined to comment, describing the discussion as a “private business meeting.” She also declined to say whether it was Fillon or Trichet who had requested the meeting.

An official at the French Finance Ministry, who asked not to be named because he was not present at the meeting, said the agenda of the discussion covered a range of topics, including the health of the euro-zone economy and structural economic reforms being proposed by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

The talks between Trichet and Fillon follow a rare public dispute between Paris and the ECB last week, in which Trichet exchanged barbs with French officials over whether European governments should be given a voice in the banks policy deliberations.

In an interview with the International Herald Tribune published July 18, Jean-Pierre Jouyet, the French minister for European affairs, said Paris would press for euro-zone finance ministers to confront the ECB directly over interest rate policy.

The next day, Trichet condemned the French declaration as “unacceptable” and in violation of the principles set in the central banks founding treaty, which explicitly states that European officials should “respect this principle and not seek to influence the members of the decision-making bodies of the ECB.”

The Finance Ministry official said France “confirms its support for the independence” of the ECB but repeated that Paris remained “very attached” to the idea of creating an institutionalized forum for “constructive dialogue” between European finance ministers and the ECB.

Although the timing of the meeting Wednesday suggests that Trichet had an opportunity to repeat in private what the ECB has said publicly, meetings with senior European politicians are not unusual. Typically, central bankers view such meetings as an occasion to argue for the banks position - whether on monetary policy or issues like its independence - rather than any give-and-take with the politicians.

Carter Dougherty contributed reporting from Frankfurt.