More on Skype - update

An update on my earlier posting on the Skype deal. Joff Wild over at IAM Magazine has a good discussion from an IP lawyer over on his blog: eBay pulls a rabbit out of the bag, but it could have been so much better. Turns out the problem may be worse that thought. According to Ted Sabety:

Joltid holds at least one patent independently from Skype, which issued in January, for a "distributed database". If this patent is relevant to the underlying technology Skype licensed in, replacing the licensed software does not get Skype out of the woods on the patent front.

His advice:

The lesson here is that it is important for acquirors (eBay) always to obtain sufficient rights in a software acquisition to build the business and possibly to sell it: either by obtaining the right to modify source code or, at a minimum, obtaining sufficient patent rights independent of the existing software code in order to permit independent development.

Thanks to Joff for tracking this down.