

Skype Founders Sue eBay, Investors  - borism
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125313063626017009.html

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jacquesm
A quote from the NYT article regarding the lawsuit:

(
[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/technology/companies/05noc...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/technology/companies/05nocera.html)
)

"But it also acknowledges that an “adverse result” could mean that the
continued operation of Skype’s business as currently conducted would likely
not be possible."

That's quite a statement.

And if the amounts are what they are claiming then it might make continued
operation of ebay impossible, after all, ebay is selling skype in order to
recover some of the money they sunk in the project.

Skype has been putting a serious damper ebays balance sheet the last couple of
years, 1.9 B$ in their cash drawer is roughly 18 months profits.

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borism
That's a different lawsuit if you have access to paid WSJ (they had full
article for free for few minutes since they broke the news, then pulled it off
into premium. bummer).

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jacquesm
Wow, there is more than one of them ?

I read it as being the same. The key seems to be this bit:

"It turns out that in selling Skype to eBay, Mr. Friis and Mr. Zennstrom
retained control of a key part of the Skype technology, which they licensed to
eBay. Although the details are under seal in a London court, the Skype
founders’ essential complaint is that eBay tampered with their software, and
in doing so, violated the terms of the licensing agreement. They were
demanding that Skype be forced to stop using the technology, which, for all
intents and purposes, would mean shutting down Skype itself. The case is set
for trial in 2010."

Sorry for muddying the waters.

Btw, if you follow the link to the article from google news you can read it.

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zandorg
That's a new angle on this: That eBay are messing around with the Skype code.
My best guess is, tampering with superpeers to get short-term speed ups,
versus long-term messing up Skype fundamentally.

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st3fan
Nice soap opera.

