Founders use injunction hoping to foil $2.75 billion Skype deal

Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom have added another layer to their previous lawsuit against eBay and Silver Lake Partners over copyright infringement. They are seeking an injunction against Mike Volpi and Index Ventures in an attempt to derail the purchase of the Internet voice company from eBay. At the beginning of September, eBay agreed to sell a majority stake (65 percent) in Skype to a consortium of investors led by Silver Lake for $2.75 billion. Index Ventures was one of the members of that consortium.

According to GigaOm, the complicated story basically boils down to the Skype founders who now run Joost and Joltid allege that former Joost president and now Index Ventures partner Mike Volpi ran off with his Joost-company computer containing source code from Skype that he allegedly hopes to reverse engineer and circumvent the use and licensing fees of Joltid's peer-to-peer software. The Skype guys are upset because those royalty checks are made out to them and they wouldn't mind buying Skype back for themselves.

If the injunction works it will mean the purchase deal cannot go through if Index Ventures and Mike Volpi are part of the purchasing party.

For more:
- read GigaOm's article here [1]
- and their previous article on the purchase [2]

Related articles
Skype sale faces legal challenge [3]
eBay sells 65% stake in Skype for $2B [4]
Skype founders want to buy back company from eBay [5]