Auction house eBay’s plans to sell Skype have been put on hold over a technology licensing dispute, but the legal battle could have serious consequences for users of the internet nattering service: eBay has warned you could be disconnected altogether if a settlement isn’t reached.
eBay bought out Skype for $2.6bn (£1.57bn) back in 2005, but has been caught in a legal tussle since it didn’t pay the company’s co-founders the sum they were expecting. Not a wise move, as the pair, Janus Frils and Niklas Zennstrom, still claim to own the licence for some of Skype’s core technology through a company called Joltid, and yanked permission to use it. Skype continues to use it though, so a court case is on course.
Now, eBay has officially admitted that it’s preparing for a worst case scenario and coming up with its own Skype code to fall back on, but has warned that if it doesn’t pull it off, “there is the possibility of an adverse result”, which “may result in loss of functionality or customers even if successful.” Translated from legalese, that means Skype could, er, stop working. Yikes.
The court case isn’t scheduled until June 2010, so eBay has plenty of time to come up with an alternative, but we’re hoping for an early resolution: and since Skype claims 480 million users, a large swathe of the world’s population will be too.
Out TBC | £TBC | eBay and Skype (Via The Register)
