14 DAY TRIAL // The Skype deal has managed to complicate itself so much that a reader can lose track of events as days go by. Times Online has reported that Skype's original founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, have filed a copyright infringement claim at the District court of North Carolina, accusing eBay of sharing and altering Skype's source code.
Before we continue let's recap some key events. In 2005, eBay proudly announced that it had bought the Skype P2P VoIP client. What was not initially disclosed but came to surface later was the fact that the deal kept Skype's source code in the property of a company named Joltid, managed by Skype's founders.
In this way, all the core code provided to eBay's Skype client had to come and be approved by Joltid, without eBay having any rights of distribution of property over it. This seems to be the reason why Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom have gotten all agitated about recently, since there have been speculations that eBay got its hands dirty in Skype's insides.
Or maybe not. After going under the radar earlier this year in the press, eBay filed and started a legal dispute with Joltid, accusing the company of an illegal contract termination that would soon follow and which would render the Skype client useless without its core technology. The case is scheduled for next year and is more than likely to decide whether eBay's Skype client will continue to function in its original source code or will have to seek other technology to power itself in the future.
Maybe this is the reason why eBay has recently sold the majority stake in Skype for $1.9 billion to a group of investors. Anticipating legal and technical whirlwinds eBay gives away its desire to simply make Skype go away. In this desperate act of Skype-oversaturation, eBay executives might have made the biggest mistake of their business carriers.
By selling Skype to another party, they could have self-terminated the Skype licensing deal without even knowing it. Also, some questions arise as to whether the recent deal between eBay and the investors group will indirectly lead to source code sharing, which will more than likely lead to eBay losing both of its legal licensing disputes with Skype's founders.
Before Skype implodes, you can still download and use it via this Softpedia link.