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More Lawyers Go After Skype |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Saturday, 03 June 2006 |
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Page 1 of 2
There’s nothing like a dose of success and a multi-billion
dollar acquisition to attract attention -- unwanted attention, that is. More Skype
news has broken about a potential patent infringement, this time from cable VoIP
provider Net2Phone.
Lawyers at the peer-2-peer (P2P) broadband phone company now
have a second patent litigation claim to defend. The company, which was acquired
in a massive US$4.1 billion deal with web auctioneer, eBay, already has to deal
with patent infringement accusations arising from the shady Kazaa days like a
skeleton from the closet of Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Jaanus Friis.
Now Associated Press and Reuters are reporting that the
company is facing further litigation from Net2Phone. Although details are still
sketchy, with neither party willing to comment on the dispute, the case was
filed late Thursday in the US District Court in Newark, New Jersey.
Net2Phone, a subsidiary of mega telco supplier IDT Corp,
alleges that Skype Technologies SA has infringed on its patent for point-to-point
Internet calling.
Accordingly it is suing Skype and its parent company, eBay,
charging that Net2Phone has "lost an unspecified amount of money" as a result.
Net2Phone is comprised of two wholly owned subsidiaries: Net2Phone
Global Services, and Net2Phone Cable Telephony, but in turn it is owned by IDT
Corporation, a multinational telecommunications, entertainment and technology
company.
IDT primarily dealt in prepaid and rechargeable calling
cards, but is now making a healthy living offering wholesale carrier services
and consumer fixed and wireless phone services.
IDT's Net2Phone division made a name for itself in the Internet
to fixed line IP telephony business, hence the name. It claims to carry
millions of phone call minutes per day. The Global Services division provides VoIP
services to retail consumers and small SMBs, while the Cable Telephony division
sells VoIP carrier solutions to North American and Western European cable
operators. NCT manages the cable operators' networks for them and is basically
a whitelable service provider.
Meanwhile, StreamCast Networks, the first to take aim at
Skype once it was acquired by eBay, is the owner of the P2P file sharing
platform, Morpheus. StreamCast accuses Skype and Kazaa founders Zennström and Friis
of reneging on a deal to sell it a core technology which StreamCast claims the
two sold to eBay as part of the Skype acquisition.
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