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Tag Archive: Niklas Zennstrom

Suit Up: Skype’s Founders Sue eBay for Copyright Infringement

Suit Up: Skype

The legal tussle between Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis and online auction house eBay looks like it’s going to turn into a shooting war: Skype’s founders, via their company Joltid, have filed an infringement suit in the Northern California U.S. District Court accusing eBay and a group of its investors of infringing on Joltid’s intellectual property on a massive scale through continued operation of Skype services. Joltid wants an injunction that would prevent eBay from using Joltid’s intellectual property, as well as damages that Joltid “reasonably” believes could amount to $75 million per day.

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eBay Wrangles with Joltid Over Skype P2P Technology

eBay Wrangles with Joltid Over Skype P2P Technology

Back in 2005, online auction site eBay bought VoIP powerhouse Skype amid glowing promises of synergy between the two companies…but this year, admitted that hadn’t really worked out and announced plans to spin Skype back off into its own company with an IPO. However, an unresolved technology licensing battle may derail the plans, because it turns out Skype’s founders managed to retain control of peer-to-peer technology underlying Skype; now they’re looking to kill the licensing agreement saying Skype is in breach of contract.

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eBay Sues Skype Founders

eBay Sues Skype Founders

You may well remember that Internet auction giant eBay bought VoIP leader Skype for $2.6 billion in 2005, making very rich men of Skype’s co-founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. Now, however, relations seem to have fractured, according to Bloomberg.

It would appear that one thing eBay didn’t purchase was Skype’s peer-to-peer sharing technology. As eBay prepares a Skype IPO for next year, Zennstrom and Friis have accused to company of breaching the licensing deal they made and are threatening to pull their technology – which would render the service useless, of course.

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Founders Looking to Buy Back Skype VoIP Service?

Founders Looking to Buy Back Skype VoIP Service?

About three and a half years ago, online auction giant eBay bought VoIP success story Skype for some $2.6 billion dollars, and espoused dreams of integrating Skype functionality into its ecommerce business so, say, buyers could call up sellers and get details on items before placing a bid, or maybe the company would hold online real-time voice auctions. To hear eBay talk, the possibilities for synergy were endless.

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eBay Admits It Overvalued Skype

You may remember two years ago when eBay handed over $2.6 billion to purchase VoIP company Skype. People were surprised, and Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis were a very happy pair.  

Now eBay is admitting it might well have paid well over the odds back then, and is writing down the value of its investment in the company.

The result? The company is taking charges of $1.43 billion on the purchase. Around $900million of that is a write-down of value, with another $530 million earmarked to settle future obligations to some shareholders.

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CBS To Get Joost Up

American broadcast network CBS has announced it will offer programming via the Internet-based video service Joost when it officially launches—which ought to be this quarter. The announcement makes CBS the first broadcast network to sign on with Joost, although it’s not Joost’s first major partnership: the upstart Internet television service has already announced partnership with Jump TV and with CBS parent company Viacom.

“Joost combines best-in-class technology with superb video quality and a management team with a proven track record,” said Quincy Smith, president of CBS Interactive, in a release. “Partnering with Joost for the CBS Interactive Audience Network showcases our content and community on a service that allows for unique advertising opportunities and a delivery framework that maximizes cost efficiency.”  Read more...

Skype Looking to Hook Up with PayPal

At a technology conference in California, Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom said VoIP leader Skype and online payments giant PayPal are working together enable Skype users to send each other money via PayPal using the Skype service. Zennstrom declined to offer any details of when the service would be available to Skype users, but indications are that the capability will debut shortly, in part to support Skype Prime, a new community feature in Skype 3.1 which enables Skype users to charge for information services offered via Skype.  Read more...

Skype Founders Announce Joost Online TV

Just last month, Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom revealed they were working on an Internet-based broadband television service dubbed “The Venice Project.” The idea is to provide high-quality television programming via the Internet, and have the whole thing be supported by advertising—and this be free to users. The global platform would support copyright protection for content owners, while integrating “Web 2.0″ technologies like tagging and community-driven interactivity.  Read more...

Skype Founders Confirm IPTV Service Test

Following the $4.1 billion sale of Skype to online auction giant eBay in 2005, Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom invested part of the money in developing “The Venice Project,” an idea for a broadband television service for computers…and quietly went to work. Soon, the wait may be over: a spokesperson for Friis and Zennstrom has confirmed that a private beta test of the product was launched last week, with some 6,000 users already testing the service.

According to Janus Friis’s blog, The Venice Project has been in low-key testing for a few months; the private beta marks the first expansion to a larger scale.  Read more...

Net2Phone Files Patent Suit Against Skype

Seems like everyone wants a piece of the VoIP pie: Net2Phone, the newly-acquired Internet telephone division of IDT, has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in new jersey against VoIP giant Skype, itself recently acquired by online auction firm eBay. At issue: Net2Phone claims Skype’s VoIP technology infringes against a patent granted Net2Phone in August 2000. The patent concerns the exchange of IP addresses to establish data links between Internet-connected systems.

Net2Phone is seeking an injunction against Skype’s Internet-based phone service and unspecified damages.

Net2Phone’s parent company IDT primarily provides centralized voice telephony solutions for cable companies and telco providers; Skype, conversely, provider peer-to-peer end-user VoIP telephony applications.  Read more...

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