As you may remember, two months ago eBay was planning to spin Skype into an independent company. The buyers who would take control of Skype from eBay included Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Index Ventures, and Silver Lake. However the founders of Skype interrupted the sale by claiming intellectual property infringement on the VoIP technology. The original founders of Skype started a company called Joltid. And Joltid said that they were suing eBay.
The lawsuit has now been settled. eBay will be selling a majority ownership of Skype to the aforementioned investors for $2 billion. Joltid will be licensing the technology to the new Skype buyers. Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis will get 14% ownership in Skype as a result. Both Friis and Zennstrom will also make a “significant’ investment in Skype too. eBay will retain 30% in Skype and the rest of the investor group will get 56%.
Friis and Zennstrom also filed a lawsuit back in September against former Joost CEO Mike Volpi. Friis and Zennstrom founded Joost several years ago and sued Volpi because of breach of fiduciary duty. Volpi is currently a partner with Index Ventures which is one of the companies buying Skype. As a result, Index Ventures is no longer one of the buyers in Skype. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of this year.
At the beginning of the month, eBay announced that they would be selling Skype to several buyers. The buyers included Silver Lake, Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. That sale has been interrupted not by Kanye West, but by the founders of Joost and Skype.
The founders of Joost and Skype started another company called Joltid. Joltid is suing eBay on the basis that Skype is infringing on their technology at least $100,000 times per day. eBay denies the allegations. But Joltid co-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom says that their company holds the intellectual property rights to VoIP applications including Skype. Joltid filed the lawsuit against eBay two weeks after the announcement was made that Skype would be sold to the aforementioned buyers.
Today another lawsuit was filed by the Joltid, Skype, and Joost co-founders. Zennstrom and Friis filed a lawsuit against former Joost CEO and Chairman Mike Volpi along with venture capital firm Index Ventures. The lawsuit states that there has been a breach of “fiduciary duty against Volpi, aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty against Index, interference with prospective business advantage, misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract against Index, breach of confidence, and civil conspiracy.” Volpi had recently quit Joost to join Index Ventures back in July.
Between Index being sued and wanting to buy Skype from eBay, that company is up the creek made out of you know what with no oar. I also think it is safe to say that Friis and and Zennström don’t want to see Index own the company that they built and sold to eBay. Who knows? Maybe the purchase of Skype might be too much of a headache and might the transaction may be aborted. But all the buyers involved have already come to far and won’t go down without a fight.
Several investors are considering making a bid on Skype, the voice-over-IP service owned by eBay. eBay bought out Skype for about $4.1 billion in September 2005 but failed to find a real way to integrate the service into their system.
Some of the investors considering making a bid includes Andreesen Horowitz and Index Ventures. Index Ventures was one of the early investors in Skype. There is also rumored to be another multi-billion dollar private equity company involved according to TechCrunch.
At one point eBay was considering having Skype have their own IPO. It is unclear whether the current Skype CEO Josh Silverman will still be involved if an acquisition does take place. While Silverman was running Skype, the company grew to $551 million in revenue this year. By 2011, eBay expects Skype to hit about $1 billion in revenues.
Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis both started Skype together shortly after KaZaa. If Skype gets acquired, then the private equity companies and investors would probably work towards an IPO.
The world has become a complicated place. It was to my understanding that if a bigger company made you a millionaire a few years ago and you did not have to work for them anymore, you’d just take your money and be happy on some island. Apparently the founders of Skype have decided to give eBay a hard time even though the company bought them out for $2.6 billion in September 2005. What more could the two founders want?
eBay wrote in their quarterly filing that there is pending litigation over the technology that Skype uses to operate. Skype uses a technology licensed from Joltid Ltd. Joltid is a company run by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. Aside from starting Skype together, Friis and Zennstrom have also built P2P software KaZaa and P2P video streaming service Joost.
Joltid was seeking to have a licensing agreement terminated on Skype. Skype filed a claim in the U.K. against Joltid’s push for licensing termination. But Joltid filed a counterclaim reiterating that they hold the rights to the P2P technology used by Skype. The trial will be taking place in early 2010. To mitigate the risk of Joltid having too much software power over Skype, eBay has started developing their own P2P VoIP technology.
“Skype has begun to develop alternative software to that licensed through Joltid. However, such software development may not be successful, may result in loss of functionality or customers even if successful, and will in any event be expensive,” stated eBay.
In April, eBay announced that they are planning to have Skype spin off as its own independent company and have an IPO of their own. Last year, Skype made $551 million in revenues alone. Skype’s expected revenue for 2011 is about $1 billion. eBay said that this setback will not hinder their future plans for Skype.
