Any item of litigation will resolve itself based on two major factors: (1) legal technicalities; and (2) what I call "motivating factors."
I upvoted irq11's comment, though I disagree with the conclusion, for flagging this important distinction.
Any lawyer who assesses a case purely on legal technicalities will likely get caught short because all concerned at a trial (judge and jury) will normally be taking a wider view of the case based on their sense of what really happened between the parties, regardless of legal technicalities. If they see someone as a liar, a jerk, a schemer, a shark, or whatever, they will be highly "motivated" to find against that party so long as the law gives them any hook upon which to do so.
That said, my own view tends to align with yours (pvg). As I see it, this thing has "shark" written all over it, and the shark here will likely be seen to be Mr. Ceglia (both because of the heavily lopsided contract terms and because he is opportunistically trying to sandbag FB's shareholders - who clearly are innocent even if Mr. Zuckerberg is not - after lying in wait for many years, a dirty shot by any measure). I could be wrong on this, of course, but I would be quite surprised in this sort of case if someone who did what Mr. Ceglia did here would be viewed sympathetically at any phase of this court proceeding. In other words, I would say that the "motivating factors" for this case would tilt in favor of Mr. Zuckerberg (and Facebook) from the facts revealed so far. Reasonable minds might differ on this (with respect to Mr. Zuckerberg only), and other facts might later be revealed to alter this conclusion, but that is how I see it so far.
Of course, there is no accounting for how people might choose to see this outside of court but I think this tends to confirm my point that many people simply have a desire to see Mr. Zuckerberg get his comeuppance and that is why the reporting comes out the way it does as well.
