Founders of Skype initiated a legal action against ebay, demanding billions of dollars in damages against the investment group that has just agreed to buy the internet telephony company from eBay.
Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who became billionaires after selling Skype to eBay in 2005, filed a copyright lawsuit on Wednesday against Skype in the United States District Court of Northern California. The suit comes a little more than two weeks after eBay announced it would sell most of Skype for $1.9 billion to a consortium of investors led by the private equity firm Silver Lake Partners.
In the court filing, Joltid, a company owned by the Skype founders, claims that eBay violated copyright law by altering and sharing the peer-to-peer source code behind the free Internet calling service. The Skype founders maintained ownership of that source code after selling Skype to eBay in 2005, and licensed it to eBay. Joltid seeks an injunction and statutory damages, which it says could total more than $75 million a day.
Skype, which started in 2002, allows users to make calls from their computers to landlines, mobile phones and other computers. At its heart is the peer-to-peer technology created by its founders, who also devised Kazaa, the file-sharing software.
EBay paid $2.6 billion for Skype in 2005 but did not buy the core technology, licensing it instead from Joltid, Mr Friis and Mr Zennstrom's company.
After the pair left Skype, they allege, eBay executives began to alter the code used in the technology in breach of the licence.
Posted by Divya Agarwal | Views 467 | 
