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.
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.
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.
Earlier today, Joost and Joltid attacked!
The pair of companies, which are controlled by Skype co-founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, filed a motion for preliminary injunction against former Joost CEO Michelangelo Volpi and Index Ventures, where Volpi now works as a partner, asking that he not use knowledge or confidential information he got at the video start-up in current dealings with the Internet telephony giant.
Here are 10 filings made today related to the injunction!
Joost and Joltid filed a motion for preliminary injunction against former Joost CEO Michelangelo Volpi and Index Ventures, where Volpi now works as a partner, asking that he not use knowledge or confidential information he got at the video start-up in current dealings with Skype.
The move is yet another legal attack from the founders of Skype, who were on the losing side of the $2 billion deal to buy the Internet telephony giant from eBay.
Revenge is a dish best served cold–except, of course, when one decides to serve it piping hot.
And that’s just what part of one of the losing sides of the $2 billion deal to buy Skype from eBay is doing in an unusual attack on Michelangelo Volpi, a well-known tech exec in Silicon Valley.
It’s Joost-y, for sure, so step right up to this sorry spectacle.
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference. Read more »
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