An earlier posting brought up the subject of Skype's patent problem -- pending litigation in the UK over alleged violation of the terms of a licensing agreement. At that time, I speculated that eBay has miscalculated when if failed to secure all the intangible assets of the company when it acquired Skype. Now it turns out that some very savvy investors are willing to pay a lot of money for Skype. Do they know something that the rest of the world doesn't?
Maybe.
And it may be contained in the end line of the Wall Street Journal report on the deal:
Maybe.
And it may be contained in the end line of the Wall Street Journal report on the deal:
A potential spin-off of the company has been clouded by ongoing intellectual property dispute with Joltid Ltd., a company owned by Skype's founders that has the rights to some of its core technology. Joltid alleged that eBay violated its licensing agreement for the technology and has threatened to end the agreement. EBay asked a U.K. court to find that it isn't in breach of the license, but proceedings could stretch on for months. Meanwhile, eBay said it was undertaking an "expensive" effort to develop a work-around for the Joltid software.I wonder if the deal is contingent upon that work-around?
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