Skype Founders Pull Out the Stops
The men who launched the Internet-calling service are redoubling their legal efforts after a failed last-minute bid to buy back the eBay unit — Skype's founders aren't letting go of their brainchild without a legal fight. Turns out they mounted a formidable financial battle, too.
Context & Ripple Effects
eBay has spent years unable to make Skype work strategically — Techdirt was already dismissing eBay's integration plans back in 2006, and the International Herald Tribune was still asking when the acquisition would pay off later that year. The dispute turned existential this summer, when the founders asserted in a July claim that eBay no longer has a right to Skype's core peer-to-peer technology.
Since then the fight has escalated fast: a September lawsuit crystallized just how exposed Skype's IP position is, with TechCrunch assessing the prognosis as grim, and the same week brought the suit targeting former CEO Mike Volpi alongside Joost. Business Week now reports the founders' last-minute financial bid to buy the unit back from eBay failed — meaning they are pressing forward on both legal fronts rather than settling.
First-order effects
- eBay cannot cleanly divest Skype while the founders contest ownership of its core technology — any sale price now carries an unpriced litigation risk that sits entirely on the seller's side of the table.
- The failed buyback means no negotiated resolution is on offer: Zennström and Friis have committed to litigation as their only remaining path to regaining control.
Second-order effects
- Prospective buyers of the Skype unit must either demand indemnification and escrowed IP protections from eBay or walk away, forcing eBay to discount the deal or settle with the founders before a transaction can close.
- The public legal battle destabilizes Skype's operating relationships — partners and platform players like Apple, whose devices run Skype clients, face uncertainty over who actually controls the underlying protocol.
Third-order effects
- If founder-retained IP can stall the resale of a major acquired asset, acquirers will respond by tightening IP assignment terms and earnout structures at purchase — repricing every future exit negotiation.
- The case becomes a precedent for the 'quasi-exit' pattern: founders who monetize but never fully relinquish legal control, converting litigation into a second bite at ownership long after the original sale closed.
The trend: Founder-held intellectual property is emerging as a lever capable of stalling or reshaping the resale of acquired startups, with Skype's contested core technology as the sharpest current example.