Ebay’s bid to sell Skype hit a potential hurdle on Wednesday as the founders of the Web communications company filed a lawsuit for copyright infringement.
Joltid Ltd, a company started by Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, named eBay, Skype and the group of investors who are seeking to purchase Skype from eBay as defendants in the lawsuit.
EBay purchased Skype from Zennstrom and Friis in 2005 for a price tag that eventually exceeded US$3.1 billion.
Joltid, which has also filed suit against Skype in a British court, said it holds “the intellectual property rights to several key applications which it has licensed to a number of companies, among them Skype.”
“Joltid terminated its license agreement with Skype as a result of breaches by Skype,” a Joltid spokesman said. “Skype has infringed Joltid’s copyrights.”
“Joltid will vigorously enforce its copyrights and other intellectual property rights in all of the technologies it has innovated,” he said.
In its complaint, Joltid said it “seeks actual and statutory damages for infringement [which Joltid reasonably believes are amassing at a rate of more than US$75 million daily] and an injunction to stop the infringement.”
The suit was filed with a California court two weeks after eBay announced it was selling a 65 percent stake in Skype to private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, London-based Index Ventures, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz for some US$2 billion.
Also named as a defendant was Index Ventures partner Mike Volpi, who was removed last week as chairman of Joost, an online video company also founded by Web entrepreneurs Zennstrom and Friis.
EBay, in a statement, dismissed the lawsuit as “without merit” and said it expected the sale of Skype to go ahead as scheduled.
“Their allegations and claims are without merit and are founded on fundamental legal and factual errors,” the online auction house said. “We remain on track to close the transaction in the fourth quarter of 2009.”
Skype, which has its headquarters in Luxembourg, bypasses the standard telephone network by channeling voice and video calls over the Internet.
Its allows users to call others free of charge and provides the ability to connect with land lines or mobile devices at low rates.
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