A company called StreamCast alleged that Skype‘s founders who also developed the Kazaa online file-swapping software took the phone technology with them after they sold Kazaa to another company and went on to wrongfully profit from its use. They claim Skype broke an agreement to give StreamCast an option on Skype’s voice over IP technology.
Streamcast were asking for more than $4.1 billion and an injunction blocking eBay from selling Skype services. Seeing as eBay already paid $2.6 billion for Skype this would have been pretty detrimental to the bottom line. The news comes just hours before the fourth quarter results are due to be announced later today.
All claims against Skype and eBay have been dismissed.