StreamCast has just expanded its lawsuit against the firms to include eBay, Skype's new owner.
May 24, 2006 (Press Release) --
The bizarre shenanigans that led to a recent blood feud between StreamCast Networks (makers of the Morpheus P2P client) and Kazaa, Skype, and Altnet aren't over yet. StreamCast has just expanded its lawsuit against the firms to include eBay, Skype's new owner. With the new addition, the stakes in the case are substantially higher—StreamCast is now asking for US$4 billion in actual damages, US$12 billion in treble damages, along with various and sundry other damages and fines.
The amended court filing details a labyrinthine story of alleged greed, backstabbing, and conspiracy that culminated in Morpheus being mysteriously booted from the FastTrack network in 2002, a move that StreamCast says cost it millions of customers. The shutdown was allegedly done by the original founders of Kazaa (who later founded Skype) with the goal of selling FastTrack technology exclusively to Sharman Networks. In the end, though, like most such cases, it's about money. From the StreamCast press release:
"The suit states that the original Kazaa co-founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, profited handsomely from the sale of Skype to eBay only after they and others engaged in a conspiracy through which they, among other things, misappropriated assets and a customer base belonging to StreamCast and illegally and secretly transferred away the rights to the FastTrack technology."
That FastTrack technology is alleged to be the basis for Skype, and StreamCast argues that it had the right of first refusal to the technology, which was instead sold to Sharman. eBay, who purchased Skype, has now been dragged into the case as StreamCast seeks the staggering sum of money they believe should have been theirs.
StreamCast is clearly angry about the entire situation. They don't pull their punches in the court filing, which opens with the claim that "defendants have orchestrated an elaborate over-seas shell game in an attempt to steal and wrongfully profit from technology that rightfully belongs to StreamCast." Reading the complaint, one comes away with the sense that StreamCast deeply believes that it could have become the company bought up by eBay for US$2 billion if only things had gone differently. The complaint itself has more strange plot twists than a soap opera, but it remains to be seen whether the case is anything more than an attempted money grab now that Skype has made it big.
Source: http://arstechnica.com/
The amended court filing details a labyrinthine story of alleged greed, backstabbing, and conspiracy that culminated in Morpheus being mysteriously booted from the FastTrack network in 2002, a move that StreamCast says cost it millions of customers. The shutdown was allegedly done by the original founders of Kazaa (who later founded Skype) with the goal of selling FastTrack technology exclusively to Sharman Networks. In the end, though, like most such cases, it's about money. From the StreamCast press release:
"The suit states that the original Kazaa co-founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, profited handsomely from the sale of Skype to eBay only after they and others engaged in a conspiracy through which they, among other things, misappropriated assets and a customer base belonging to StreamCast and illegally and secretly transferred away the rights to the FastTrack technology."
That FastTrack technology is alleged to be the basis for Skype, and StreamCast argues that it had the right of first refusal to the technology, which was instead sold to Sharman. eBay, who purchased Skype, has now been dragged into the case as StreamCast seeks the staggering sum of money they believe should have been theirs.
StreamCast is clearly angry about the entire situation. They don't pull their punches in the court filing, which opens with the claim that "defendants have orchestrated an elaborate over-seas shell game in an attempt to steal and wrongfully profit from technology that rightfully belongs to StreamCast." Reading the complaint, one comes away with the sense that StreamCast deeply believes that it could have become the company bought up by eBay for US$2 billion if only things had gone differently. The complaint itself has more strange plot twists than a soap opera, but it remains to be seen whether the case is anything more than an attempted money grab now that Skype has made it big.
Source: http://arstechnica.com/
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