Filed under: Business, Utilities, VoIP
Will a lawsuit spell the end of Skype?
A disagreement about the licensing terms for a key part of Skype's VoIP software has brought a legal battle that's threatening to shut the online phone service down. Don't panic yet if you're one of Skype's nearly 500 million users, though. The trial between Skype's parent company, eBay, and the company that produced the technology, Joltid, is not set for trial until June 2010. Skype is working to develop its own version of the technology, so the Joltid license won't be necessary anymore. This is expensive and time-consuming, and eBay warns that it might not be successful. However, "Skype is confident of its legal position," so the sky isn't falling just yet. Interestingly, the reporting on this battle doesn't mention what part of Skype runs on the Joltid-licensed software, only quoting eBay as saying that Skype could not exist as is without the technology.
[via CNN]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Molly said 10:30AM on 8-01-2009
"Interestingly, the reporting on this battle doesn't mention what part of Skype runs on the Joltid-licensed software, only quoting eBay as saying that Skype could not exist as is without the technology."
the rights for Skype's P2P protocol remained with Joltid
spending $2.6bn and then forget to secure the very foundation of the product in the deal, not exactly a smart move, eBay. :)
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Ted said 12:29PM on 8-01-2009
If you read Joltid's site, it tells you exactly what technology is used. ;)
"Joltid also created its current flagship product, Global Index™. Global Index is the world’s most technologically advanced, scalable and field-tested peer-to-peer technology. Global Index creates a self-organizing and self-healing distributed storage, transport and data object management system that does away with the costs of traditional datacenter solutions and enables a range of applications from communications to broadcasting and beyond.
The biggest implementation of Global Index to date has been Skype where Global Index enables peer-to-peer voice, video and chat communications."
Hooray for research.
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