Showing posts with label Skype founders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Skype founders. Show all posts

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Skype Founders File Copyright Suit Against eBay; New York Times, 9/17/09

Brad Stone, New York Times; Skype Founders File Copyright Suit Against 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."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/technology/companies/17skype.html