eBay's$1.9bn deal to sell Skypeto a group of venture
capitalists could be derailed by a copyright infringement case
filed in a US court.
The firm that owns the peer-to-peer (P2P) technology that is key
to the way Skype works, Joltid, has charged eBay and Skype's
potential buyers with copyright infringement.
The new case filed this week expands on a similar and still
undecided case filed in a UK court earlier this year against eBay
before it accepted the venture capitalists' offer to buy Skype.
The deal was agreed after Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and
Janus Friis failed to raise eBay's asking price for buying back the
company.
eBay announced
Skype was for sale in April, when eBay CEO John Donahoe said
Skype was a great stand-alone business with accelerating momentum,
but it did not fit with eBay and PayPal.
Joltid, which only licensed its key internet telephony software
to eBay when it bought Skype in 2005, alleges that eBay has broken
the terms of that licensing agreement.
According to Joltid, Skype modified the source code of its P2P
technology without permission and distributed copies to third
parties.
If Joltid wins its copyright infringement case, Skype may be
forced to stop operating unless it can find a replacement for
Joltid's key P2P software, according to the
Financial Times.
Software experts have said Skype may struggle to find
replacement software that will enable the service to connect more
than 16 million people over the internet at peak times each
day.
As part-owners of Joltid, this would put Zennstrom and Friis in
a very strong position to force eBay to renegotiate a deal for
Skype.