New Lawsuit Brings Clarity To Skype's IP Problem (Prognosis: Screwed)
When a group of investors pooled their resources a few weeks ago to put a bid in to buy Skype from eBay, I thought there was a good chance that Skype's legal woes were behind them. Apparently, I was wrong …
Context & Ripple Effects
The IP fight over Skype has been escalating all summer: in late July the founders, via Joltid, claimed eBay no longer holds the rights to Skype's core P2P technology, a license dispute that strikes at the heart of what any buyer would be purchasing. By mid-September analysts were reading the Joltid suit as leverage rather than pure litigation — a ploy to force a buyback of Skype ahead of the investor-group bid that had been assembled to take it off eBay's hands.
Today's news doubles down on that read: the same founders, through Joost, have filed a separate lawsuit against former chairman and CEO Mike Volpi — covered here and picked up by NewTeeVee — accusing him of taking Joost tech to build a web version of Skype. The original 2005 acquisition was widely criticized even at the time, with skeptics questioning eBay's plans for Skype back in June 2006; the current mess traces directly to how loosely the underlying intellectual property was secured in that deal.
First-order effects
- The investor group bidding for Skype from eBay must now price in a company whose rights to its own core P2P technology are contested by its founders' firm Joltid, turning a straightforward divestiture into a distressed-asset negotiation.
- Mike Volpi, freshly sued by Joost alongside the Skype founders, faces personal litigation exposure layered on top of the corporate dispute engulfing his former company.
Second-order effects
- eBay's exit timeline comes under pressure: with Q2 2009 results leaning on PayPal and Skype growth while Marketplaces declined, eBay needs the sale priced well despite litigation risk, pushing it toward settling or renegotiating the Joltid license before closing.
- If the Joltid dispute reads as a lever for a founder-led buyback, other bidders are effectively competing against the people who control the technology the product runs on — a negotiating position that devalues rival bids regardless of their cash.
Third-order effects
- The episode hardens a due-diligence rule for large tech acquisitions: unless the founding team's underlying patents and core code transfer fully and irrevocably at close, founders retain a veto over who can ever own or resell the asset — as this dispute shows eBay learning four years after paying for Skype.
- Founder-versus-acquirer litigation of this kind pushes boards and lawyers toward structuring deals so key technologists are contractually bound out of competing claims, shifting IP disputes from courtroom rearguard actions to upfront deal terms.
The trend: Tech acquisitions where founders retain the underlying intellectual property are turning exit disputes into buyback leverage, forcing acquirers to treat founder-held IP as unfinished business in every future deal.