Let's make a deal: Skype founders are back and now own 14%

According to the Skype blog, a deal has been made. Skype, eBay and their investors will no longer be sued by Joltid and the former Skype founders while Skype will now own the underlying codebase that makes its VoIP calls possible.

Skype President Josh Silverman's blog post explains that the deal means Joltid and Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis will join the investor group and the Skype board with a 14 percent share in Skype. They get this deal in exchange for handing over the Joltid software that Skype runs on as well as a cash investment in the company.

Given that the Skype founders wanted all along to get back into the ownership of Skype, it looks like they've succeeded in their original goals.

Friis and Zennstrom originally sued eBay and the consortium of investors that recently purchased a 65 percent stake in the VoIP calling company for copyright infringement over the use of the underlying technology in Skype, which was held by another Friis-Zennstrom entity called Joltid. The founders recently filed an injunction against Mike Volpi and Index Ventures who were part of the consortium to block them from participating while derailing the purchase. Volpi allegedly had made-off with a computer containing Joltid source code. It seems like these legal maneuvers paid off for the founders after all.

For more:
- read the blog post

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