Silicon Valley legend and now VC Marc Andreessen was making the interview rounds after the settlement between the litigation-addled co-founders of Skype and all the various people they were suing was announced this morning.

In an interview with BoomTown, when asked about the aggressive legal tactics of Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis that resulted in them finally seizing a stake in the Internet telephony giant by suing him and many other Silicon Valley players, Andreessen said:

“We did not take it personally. It’s a clean sheet of paper.”

Well, it is actually a torn, stained and very worn out piece of paper, but bygones!

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According to several sources close to the situation, barring any unforeseen delay, a deal to settle the Skype imbroglio is likely to be announced around the time the markets open tomorrow.

While the massive agreement–which will settle a series of lawsuits waged by Skype’s co-founders–is not yet officially signed, sources said lawyers are apparently putting the finishing touches on the paperwork.

Sources also said that those co-founders–Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis–will get 10 percent of Skype back for rights to key technology they control, an option to pay $83 million for another three percent of the Internet telephony service and two seats on the 23-member board.

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According to sources close to the situation, Index Ventures and Michelangelo Volpi are out of the deal to buy Skype–and their lawsuit-loving nemeses, the founders of the Internet telephony service, are in.

More details to come, but it’s sure proof that the legal system, such as it was used, works.

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The legal high jinks in the contentious battle over the fate of Skype got worse this afternoon, as former Joost CEO Michelangelo Volpi and Index Ventures filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the founders of Skype–Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, via Joost and Joltid–against them.

It’s yet another chess move among a group of well-known tech players, who used to work together closely and are now at odds.

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Perhaps the sides in the ever-escalating war over the Skype deal will work out their differences and settle–which is what should and probably will eventually happen after everyone realizes how stupid all this noisy legal wrangling over the Internet telephony giant is.

But that day is decidedly not today, given a pair of recent big-gun PR hires by parties involved.

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In the ongoing fight between Redbox–which rents DVDs from kiosks for $1–and major Hollywood studios, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment just filed a brief to dismiss Redbox’s lawsuit against it.

The fascinating legal battle between Redbox and the studios centers around the issues of steep discounting, windowing and the price for premium content.

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Yesterday, BoomTown checked in with Docstoc CEO Jason Nazar about the document sharing start-up.

Today, it’s Trip Adler, CEO of its much larger rival, Scribd.

Launched in early 2007, the San Francisco-based online publishing company allows customers to share a wider range of documents, including books and manuscripts. It now claims to have 10 million documents.

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Is it just me or is it completely ironic that a pair of European entrepreneurs kept out of the United States due to tantrum lawsuits from the music industry are stamping their own legal feet like two ill-tempered toddlers of late?

That would be Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, who today filed yet another lawsuit in their seemingly never-ending quest to win in court what they couldn’t in business dealmaking.

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If you want to get Hollywood movie studio types irked, mention Google. And if you want them steamed, bringing up Netflix will usually work.

But if you want to see the tops of their heads blow off, Redbox is just the ticket.

Except not to their movies, it seems, if the major movie studio execs have their way in an ever-growing legal battle with the DVD-rental kiosk company.

A typical consumer named Louie Swisher, though, begs to differ.

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As everyone knows by this morning, Spot Runner–the heavily-funded and once-hyped online-offline advertising agency–is being sued by one of its more prominent investors.

Ad behemoth WPP essentially paints an ugly picture of Spot Runner as the Bernie Madoff of Web 2.0.

It is alleging in a lawsuit that Spot Runner, in a “pump and dump” scheme, sold over $54 million in “secondary” shares to line its own pockets without telling WPP much, all while losing money, running out of funding and not building a sustainable business.

Here’s the background and also an interview BoomTown did with CEO and co-founder Nick Grouf in better days.

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One thing that’s nice in these volatile times is that the Winklevoss identical twins–aka the Olympic rowing hunks whom Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg seems to have repeatedly dunked since college–can always be relied upon to create nonstop entertainment for those riveted to their increasingly kooky lawsuit against the hot social-networking site.

In any case, it’s only the legal hijinks–either via rank incompetency or, more likely, creative leaking–that I want to know more about, especially since release of heretofore confidential information seems to keep seeping out of this case like some hole-plagued rowing shell.

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The election is not the only event with only days to go–a move in face-off Yahoo and Google are in with the Justice Department over their controversial search advertising partnership will have an outcome, sources close to all sides said, before the next President is chosen.

Thus, I predict news either Friday or Monday.

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Today, The Deal got played, and claimed that Yahoo and Google were likely to abandon their controversial search ad outsourcing deal.

Wrote The Deal’s Cecile Kohrs: “A proposed joint venture between rival Internet companies Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. appears headed for the trash bin, just ahead of an expected U.S. Department of Justice challenge to the agreement, lawyers close to the deal said.”

Well, maybe it will die at some point. But, in the words of Juba in the last line of the greatest movie ever (“Gladiator,” of course!): Not yet.

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You have to admire the sledgehammer stylings of Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who loves to accuse Microsoft (justifiably, I might add) of bullying lobbying tactics in our nation’s capital, in the latest moves in the regulatory fight over the controversial search ad outsourcing partnership that Yahoo and Google have struck.

Today, just days before the Justice Department will decide whether to move ahead with a lawsuit to stop the Yahoogle deal from proceeding or let it move forward with some other remedy or tweaking, Schmidt announced that he would be campaigning for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama in the last two weeks of the election.

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When he debuted his company’s new DVD copier at DEMOfall recently, called RealDVD, RealNetworks’ Rob Glaser did a video interview with BoomTown about it.

And now that RealNetworks and Hollywood are cross-suing each other over RealDVD–in the latest clash over the still-contentious copyright issue that separates the tech and entertainment industries–it’s time for a replay!

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