Word: skype
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Just when eBay thought it had figured out a way to unload a majority interest in Skype, along came the Scandinavian founders of the world's biggest provider of Internet telephony to sink the $1.9 billion deal - and perhaps Skype itself...
...Zennstrom and Janus Friis are suing eBay, based in San Jose, Calif., and a consortium of investors that includes private-equity firms Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz (co-owned by Netscape's Marc Andreessen) and the Canada Pension Plan over the breach of a software-licensing agreement. (Read "eBay Sells Skype for $1.9 Billion...
Zennstrom and Friis, through Swedish-based Joltid, claim the agreement that permitted eBay to use the peer-to-peer technology that powers Skype was terminated in March 2009. They have filed suits in Britain and the U.S. seeking damages of more than $75 million...
Wait a second: eBay bought Luxembourg-based Skype from the Scandinavians for $2.6 billion in 2005 - a lofty sum that made the heads of many in Silicon Valley spin. Can the founders now really hope to block the resale of Skype by pulling the technology on which it runs? "People are puzzled about how this happened," says analyst Stephan Beckert with Washington-based TeleGeography Research. "One thing I can say: You don't want to mess with Zennstrom...
When Zennstrom, 43, heard earlier this year that eBay wanted to divest itself of Skype, which had not created the kind of synergies the online auction house had hoped for, he approached eBay proposing to buy back the webphone company at a substantial discount. The Swede also made overtures to private-equity players in an effort to structure a deal. However, both eBay and private equity gave Zennstrom the brush. (Read "eBay Bids for Revitalization...