Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Monday 29 June 2009, 12:01 PM
Skype founders' spat with eBay threatens IPO
The online auction giant intends to launch an IPO for Skype in 2010. However, according to a report in Bloomberg, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis (through their new company Joltid) have accused eBay of breaking terms of a licensing deal.
The Skype founders apparently still own key technology that the platform needs to function, and they are threatening to withdraw that technology — which would disable Skype.
EBay has sued Friis and Zennstrom to stop this happening, according to Bloomberg. The argument could either sink the IPO or cause it to raise much less money than hoped for, lawyers quoted in the piece say.
It is not yet clear precisely what integral technology eBay failed to buy when it picked up Skype for $2.6bn four years ago.
PreviousComments on this post
Thanks for posting this, David. I have been very careful to stay away from it, because of my personal history and feelings about Skype. But I have to admit to more than a little Schadenfreude because of it.
It's ironic, isn't it? The original purchase by eBay was such a bad idea that it still tarnishes the reputation of Meg Whitman several years later. There were rumors of her considering a run for Governor or California, and the next thing to come out was "could someone who made such a spectacularly bad decision really be qualified to run the state?".
Now we learn that not only were the Skype founders smart enough to take the money and run when the time was right, they were even smarter than that, they kept the rights to one of the most crucial pieces of technology Skype is built on in their own pockets...
How nice.
jw
