By Joe Nocera http://executivesuite.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/the-skype-saga-contin ues-so-much-for-option-b/
When last we left the founders of Skype, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, they were trying to buy back their baby from eBay, to whom they had sold it in 2005 - and not having much success. (Whether this was because the bid they made with some private equity partners was too low, or because eBay wouldn't give them the time of day is a matter of considerable dispute.) They were also busy suing eBay, claiming that it was using peer-to-peer technology that remained their intellectual property - and which they no longer wished to license to eBay. Such a move, if upheld by the courts, would effectively shut down Skype. The lawsuit struck me as so serious that when eBay sold 65 percent of Skype recently to a different private equity consortium, I theorized that they probably had an ace up their sleeve. Why, I wondered, would they be willing to spend $2 billion to buy a company that was facing life-or-death litigation? In my column a few week ago, I suggested that maybe - just maybe - the new owners had some kind of wink-wink-nod-nod agreement with the Skype founders. After all, I reasoned, Michelangelo Volpi, who was part of the consortium, had been the chief executive of Joost, a company that had also been started by Mr. Friis and Mr. Zennstrom, using the same peer-to-peer technology. They had a good enough relationship that even after he stepped down, he remained chairman. Boy, did I get that wrong. Over the weekend, the Skype founders kicked Mr. Volpi off the Joost board, and announced that Joost was conducting an "investigation" of Mr. Volpi's conduct during the time he ran the company. And on Wednesday, they announced they were suing eBay for copyright infringement, and asked for an injunction and damages. In their news release, they claimed that the damages "are amassing at a rate of more than $75 million a day." Having been hounded out of their first company, Kazaa, thanks to nonstop litigation by the recording industry, the Skype founders seemed to have come away with one lesson seared into their skulls: when it comes to lawsuits, it is better to be on offense than defense. The new owners of Skype, which includes Marc Andreessen and Silver Lake Partners, had better like their lawyers. Looks like they're going to be spending a lot of time with them. *********************************** * POST TO MEDIANEWS@ETSKYWARN.NET * *********************************** Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
