Welcome to 2012 where Skype is joining Microsoft’s management culture. If we hearken back a few years, was politics one of the problems Skype had with eBay?
Skype in early 2005 was a mostly European team. They held what Americans would call liberal cultural values. Once sold to eBay, they tried to work with an eBay management team overtly embracing a conservative value system.
eBay’s management team strongly supported the US Republican party when they bought Skype in 2005 and in the years leading up to Meg Whitman’s support for 2008 GOP presidential and local elections and her 2010 run for California governor. Meg personally held eBay town hall meetings for eBay sellers across America, pressing the flesh and honing her retail political skills before declaring her candidacy. Much of eBay’s language invoked the rhetoric of populist and free market capitalism, rugged individualism, and small hands-off government. Meg and her management team donated heavily to Republican candidates, institutions and causes and many left in 2009 to work on her campaign.
In contrast, Skype avoided politics. Its lawyers were wary of telecom regulators. Its leadership was conscious that local politics didn’t fit its transnational scope and worldly staff. If anything, Skype started off embracing non-partisan geek culture, with an anti-establishment (“we’re taking on the phone companies”) and universal populism (“talk to the world for free”).
I don’t want to overstate the differences. Both teams cared about success, both spoke business, self-identified as leaders.
Yet something went wrong.
Skype was never properly integrated with eBay. I look to Whitman’s narrow charge to Skype’s founders and the technology myopia that followed. As part of the purchase, Whitman dangled a billion dollar payout to the founders if they met a few hard-to-meet goals relating to adoption, activity and revenue. The founders reacted by stifling all business and development activity that didn’t directly and quickly support those goals.
A side effect: strategic Skype technology was proposed but never seriously funded. If you want to integrate realtime conversation into eBay and PayPal experiences you need web services like cloud platforms for non-Skype developers. Skype desktop integration would never work in an environment where more than half of all eBay transactions passed through third-party applications. Had Skype had been thoroughly blended into the eBay buyer and seller experiences, would eBay have sold Skype?
Aside from executives desperate to make their gigadollar payday, eBay did little to promote integration. In fact, integration and synergy, while promised to eBay’s investors, was never a priority. eBay never appointed a VP, director, or even a manager to oversee their side of Skype integration.
With Skype’s third sale, (first being to VCs, second being to eBay), management was free from eBay culture but had private equity culture imposed. Politics wasn’t in the air; just decisiveness in preparation for sale.
And now Skype is at Microsoft, a company whose management is relatively quiet about politics, whose expedient corporate giving supports incumbents, and whose memories of painful encounters with the US Justice Department and many European regulatory bodies left a bitter caution for even talking politics.
Will Skype and Microsoft blend well? Do they share common geek and corporate values over more partisan and nationalistic ones? What core differences in world view could keep them from partnering well together? Could Skype be better off in the dynamic, rapidly growing entertainment division where radical innovation is ordinary or in one of the slow, staid and stable divisions where Skype might shine by contrast?
 Phil Wolff designs and positions realtime collaboration products, finds useful pivots, sees both both forests and trees. Phil advises the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium and is a director of the DataPortability Project. Email editor@skypejournal.com, Skype evanwolf, tweet @evanwolf, G+ or call +1-510-444-8234 to talk with Phil. Skype Journal is independent of Skype.
Rajiv Dutta died Monday and was cremated Tuesday. Guest post by Henry Gomez, former eBay SVP and Skype president.
Rajiv Dutta was my friend. He was someone you could always count on for encouragement. He was a great teacher. Rajiv could explain anything, no matter how complicated, and you always enjoyed the lesson. This skill came in handy when Rajiv talked to the financial community, especially in the early days of eBay. Rajiv’s success as eBay’s CFO reflected his enormous integrity, great intelligence, passion for the community, and his phenomenal ability to explain how our unique marketplace worked and where it was headed.
I have so many wonderful memories of Rajiv. Among my favorite are all those times we came together to work on eBay’s quarterly earnings announcements. Quarter after quarter for 6 years, Rajiv and I collaborated on the work of telling eBay’s story to reporters and investors. We were two passionate eBay believers capturing the story of a great company. It was incredible fun and a privilege to be a part of Rajiv’s work.
Working with Rajiv at Skype was also a lot of fun. Rajiv loved Skype and deeply believed in its potential. Skype’s success has proven him right.
For those of us who worked at eBay in its early years, the experience was remarkable. People forget just how much eBay excelled straight through the Internet crash of the early 2000s. In the darkest days of the crash, no one expected eBay or any other ecommerce company to succeed. But we were on a rocket ship. We were crusaders fighting for the success of the eBay community. We believed that we were making business history.
And at the center of our crusade – at the center of all the hard work, the passion and the emotion that went into our efforts – stood Rajiv Dutta, always ready to inspire us with his enthusiasm for everything we were doing.
I am blessed to have known Rajiv. His happy soul touched me in ways that I will cherish for the rest of my life.
You can follow Henry Gomez on Facebook, twitter, and LinkedIn.
 Just a quick thought about social ties. Usually we think along the dimension of strong ties (people we are close to) vs. weak ties. For example, Skype is mostly for strong tie relationships and Twitter is mostly for weaker tie relationships. That’s why Skype and Facebook don’t belong together.
You can model two other dimensions in social network analysis.
Time and context. eBay relationships are different from Skype relationships along both of those dimensions.
eBay contacts are typically ephemeral: brief and not renewed. We may share a camaraderie with people in line with us at the supermarket checkout, in the hospital waiting room, or when stuck in traffic. We expect those short relationships to end promptly.
Skype relationships are typically enduring; multiple conversations, often over long periods. There’s an element of trust.
You can see how SkypeBay integration could be problematic. Do you want to give your Skype contact information to everyone waiting to buy the Elvis PEZ dispenser? That would be unusual.
Context is the other dimension. eBay relationships come with their broad buying/selling context and the topicality of a specific market. The community is different if you’re shopping for collectibles, like Elvis PEZ dispensers, vs. cars. Skype relationships get their contexts from outside of Skype; Skype’s services don’t offer or guide their context.
If you want Skype to be part of your product, to add live talk with your social graph, remember to consider all three social tie dimensions: strength, time, and context.
I hope our relationship will be multidimensional. Call me at +1-510-343-5664, Skype me, follow @SkypeJournal and @evanwolf. Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.
 "We missed them. We haven’t been as cool, or as profitable, since they left" said an eBay spokesman of Skype Ltd. "Since we own a swap meet, a mall, an ad network, a ticket agency, a car dealership, and a bank, a phone company should fit right in. It’s about harmony, not about synergy."
UPDATE: 0630 Pacific, 1 April 2010. Conf call.
Skype management taking over eBay, and their plans for the first 30 days.
Business integration
- eBay stock listed on London stock exchange, denominated in euros
- Engineering moves to Estonia, headquarters moves to London
Harmony strategy
- eBay.com features auctions with emoticons
- Skype sports new emoticons: (sold), (sniped), (Elvis bobblehead), (powerseller)
- All eBay users can use eBay ID to automatically log into Skype
- eBay now available in 50 languages and 104 countries
- Every eBay seller and category now has own infomercial channel
- Skype acquires OnState and furnishes free Skype call center to every eBay and Half seller
- Skype acquires Pamela so buyers can fax bids and get fax auction results
- Webcams and headphones category now at top of all search results
- All phone numbers to have Skype links
- eBay apps now preinstalled on Samsung, Panasonic and LG smart TVs, Verizon smartphones
- PayPal opens in Russia, India, China
- eBay Motors installs Skype with every car
- Skype for Windows 5 adds tab showing contacts sorted by eBay activity and trust rank; search window lets you find things to buy
1. Lose the eBay toolbar on Skype installation. Are users asking for it?
2. Was there ever "an eBay company" text on Skype.com? Find it. Kill it.
3. Turn in your eBay badges.
4. Move out of Skype Inn in San Jose. Leave the eBay campus behind.
Tell us where you land so we can send a housewarming gift.
Skype blog post ("Great news – we’ve closed the deal with the new investors.") and news release.  Investor group pays Skype $1.9 billion in cash, $125 million note for 70% of Skype. eBay buys a $50 million note from them. Investors include Silver Lake, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Andreessen Horowitz Fund, and Joltid Limited. Skype now owns Joltid’s peer-to-peer intellectual property, free and clear.
All the talent dedicated to replacing Joltid’s p2p engine have been reassigned to other Skype engineering projects, like its forthcoming platform for third-parties.
This deal:
- Sold! The bullets, Phil Wolff, Skype Journal, November 6, 2009
- The rumored deal devalues Skype five percent, Skype Journal, November 6, 2009
- How much gold do you pay pirates?, Skype Journal, November 4, 2009
- eBay 2009q3 investor results (the Skype parts), Skype Journal, October 22, 2009
- Volpi’s Skype Business Concept: SIP, social, lite, layoffs, Skype Journal, October 14, 2009
- Is Joltid’s using the world’s best patent troll law firm?, Skype Journal, September 20, 2009
- Lawyers are cheap, Skype Journal, September 17, 2009
- Labor Day thoughts on the 2009 Skype sale, Skype Journal, September 7, 2009
- Who will own Skype? Om picked up the phone, Skype Journal, September 3, 2009
- The Skype sale: Hot Buzz and No Response, Skype Journal, September 1, 2009
- Skype sale: 20 Things We Don’t Know, Skype Journal, September 1, 2009
- The Sale as described by the Buyers, Skype Journal, September 1, 2009
- Skype CEO: "Today, Skype begins a new chapter", Skype Journal, September 1, 2009
The last deal:
tags: skype, sale, spinout, spinoff, m&a, acquisition, ebay, investors, eBay, Silver Lake, silverlake, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, cppib, Andreessen Horowitz Fund, AndreessenHorowitz, Joltid, p2p, peer-to-peer, intellectual propertyproperty
Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.
- The deal values Skype at $2.75 billion.
- Index is out, freeing up 2.4% of the equity.
- Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis are in.
- They are contributing Joltid software for 10% of the company.
- They are paying $83 million for 4% of the company (a discount, since that would value the $2.08 billion).
- They are dropping the ugly lawsuits.
- eBay will keep 30%, instead of 35%.
- eBay still gets $1.9 billion cash.
- Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, and other investors will own 56%, down from 65%.
- This values the Joltid IP at $275 million.
This begs the question: Why didn’t Meg Whitman buy the Joltid IP when it was vastly cheaper in 2005? In 2005 the only market for the Global Index was to iffy music sharing services without a business model.
Congrats to all for this stage being over. So will Skype’s next big liquidity event be an IPO or a merger? If M&A, with whom?
eBay’s release:
Nov 6, 2009
eBay Inc.
eBay Inc. and Silver Lake Investor Group Settle Skype Litigation with Joltid Limited
SAN JOSE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) today announced that the investor group led by Silver Lake, which had previously entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a majority stake in Skype from the company, has reached a settlement agreement with Joltid Limited and Joost N.V. that gives Skype ownership over all software previously licensed from Joltid and ends all litigation currently pending against the investor group and eBay at the closing of the acquisition.
As part of the settlement agreement, Joltid and Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis will join the investor group, contributing Joltid software and making a significant capital investment in exchange for a 14 percent stake in Skype. As a result, Silver Lake and other investors including Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), will together hold 56 percent of Skype and eBay will retain 30 percent. As previously announced, eBay will receive approximately $1.9 billion in cash upon the completion of the sale and a note from the buyer in the principal amount of $125 million. The deal, which values Skype at $2.75 billion and is not subject to a financing condition, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2009.
“Skype will be well positioned to move forward under new owners with ownership and control over its core technology,” said eBay Inc. President and CEO John Donahoe. “At the same time, eBay continues to retain a significant stake in Skype and will benefit from its continued growth. We look forward to closing the deal and focusing on growing our core ecommerce and payments businesses.”
Commenting on the agreement on behalf of the investor group, Silver Lake Managing Director Egon Durban said: "We are very pleased to have the litigation resolved. We remain confident in a great future for Skype, and we look forward to working with Niklas, Janus and the other investors as partners to help the company achieve its full potential."
The investor group will no longer include Index Ventures, which has withdrawn from participation. Commenting on its decision to withdraw, Danny Rimer of Index Ventures, said: "We are pleased that Skype will now be able to put litigation behind it, and we wish Josh Silverman, his team and the Skype investors well in continuing to grow a great business. Although Skype has the potential to be a great investment, the deal terms changed for Index such that it no longer matches our investment criteria and thus we have decided not to participate in the transaction."
 They came for fortune but were keelhauled and made to walk the plank. Now Skype’s founders are back in a small fast ship, ready to sink her if they don’t get paid. Do you fight to defend the S.S. Skype? Can you bribe the scoundrels and trust them to leave? Or do you bend, take them on as partners, and suffer them so you can put back to sea?
What do the two sides bring to the parley?
The Captain Z and Mister Friis wield barristers and silver. They sued Skype over the software license, swearing oaths were broken, blood is due, and Skype should be dry-docked until treasure is paid. They sued the new investment team, claiming keys to Joltid’s treasure were smuggled from Joost’s lockbox to key investors. And they lugged a treasure chest of cash and promises for outright ownership.
eBay and the Capitalists race to safer waters. Skype’s quartermasters slaved for months to replace Skype’s sails with sheets of their own making. Skype’s lawyers dispute each scurvy claim and denounce them. It looks like prevailing winds for Skype’s lawyers but fate, the courts, and codemongers are uncertain.
Can eBay buy their absence cheaply this winter? Are you better off swashbuckling until a verdict comes next summer? Would you throw the Index Capitalists overboard, making room for the Dane and Swede at the Captain’s Table? Could you ever turn your back once they were aboard?
The tale comes to this. Would you make a deal with the Devil himself to save your ship a battle? Or can you chart a course for open seas that leaves the pirates adrift in your wake?
Bonus Clue: Are the pirates on retainer in a grander scheme? Who benefits if Skype fails? Who would pay two billion dollars to shut Skype down?
tags: skype, joltid, joost, pirates, piracy, litigation, ebay, $ebay, $skype
Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.
Pop quiz: What kind of Pirate are you?
BusinessWeek Book review: Piracy as Innovation Strategy: Can illegal copies provide inspiration? "Matt Mason, a former London deejay and the founder of RWD, a popular British magazine, argues for piracy as a business model rather than a threat. In his new book, The Pirate’s Dilemma, he discusses the history of piracy–and how it drives innovation"
eBay says Skype sale is on track for mid 2009q4 (November). eBay’s cash will live offshore; no immediate plans for it.
Let’s look at Skype’s performance for July, August, and September this year.
First, Skypers called for 30.8 billion minutes this quarter.
Not only did Skypers call more, more were connected to the Skype network at the same time. Skype’s peak dialtone figures crossed the 19 million mark earlier this quarter. Dialtone is a measure of network availability.
While both Skype-to-Skype and Skype-to-PSTN activity grew, Skype’s Freemium Rate (the ratio between the two) also rose to a new high. The freemium rate is the number of free minutes per paid minute. It indicates demand for the premium service and suggests the company’s ability to convert free users to fee services. We’ll watch to see if this trend continues.
Skype’s customers paid $185.2 million this quarter. Revenue continued to grow outside the US but fell slightly in the US.
Skype’s prices are stable despite pressure from competitors. Revenue per minute is $0.06, rising again for the second quarter in a row.
While Skype doesn’t report active user accounts or abandoned accounts, Skype did say it picked up 40.3 million new users in the third quarter. That’s 442,857 new users daily. That’s a measure of the effectiveness of Skype’s marketing, customer word of mouth, and network effects.
The smart Hudson Barton Real Users Estimate is now over 47 million users, approximating the number of people actively using Skype. My naïve estimate is roughly 114 million people use Skype in a given month.
eBay reported the effect of the Skype deal on their financials.
They will sell 65% of Skype for about $1.8 billion in cash, most of it outside the United States. I assume they’ll spend it on future M&A.
They expect Skype to contribute $100 million in profits in the first 45 days of the fourth quarter. After that they don’t expect to see Skype post much profit since it will be paying "interest costs and amortization of intangibles."
I’m assuming the 2009 Annual report and 10K will include data for the last six weeks of Skype’s activity before the sale. After that, Skype will be privately held and won’t need to report financial information.
tags: ebay, skype, financials, charts, trends, stats, statistics, performance
Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.
It looks a little like this:
Om Malik estimates:
- Silverlake Partners: $1.48 billion.
- Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Investment Board: $300 million.
- Index Ventures Growth Fund: $70 million.
- Andreessen Horowitz: $50 million or a sixth of Marc Andreessen’s new $300 million fund.
So that almost answers #5 of our twenty spinoff questions "How is the investor pool structured and divided? Which funds and people own what?" We don’t know if they’ll all get the same stock, seats on the board, if anyone (banks, executives, employees) get small slivers of Skype Ltd. We also don’t know who invested in Silverlake’s fund.
Skype filed an update to a August 10, 2009 filing about employee stock purchase and awards with the U.S. SEC (pdf file).
"Q32. If I am a Skype employee, can I still participate in the eBay Stock Option Exchange Program? What will happen to my eligible options and new RSUs if the sale of Skype is completed?
A32. Our agreement to sell Skype raises important matters for you to consider in making a decision whether or not to participate in eBay’s Stock Option Exchange Program. Here are some things you should consider in evaluating whether or not to participate in the Stock Option Exchange Program.
As we have announced, we expect that the sale of Skype will close during the fourth quarter of 2009. If the sale of Skype is completed, as of the closing date of the sale you will no longer be an employee of eBay or one of its majority-owned subsidiaries. If you participate in the Stock Option Exchange Program and exchange your eligible options for new RSUs, you must be an employee of eBay or one of its majority-owned subsidiaries on the vesting date of the RSUs in order for the RSUs to vest. If your RSUs do not vest, you will not receive shares of eBay common stock under your new RSUs. The earliest vesting date for any new RSUs received in the Stock Option Exchange Program will be the first anniversary of the completion date (i.e., in September 2010).
As a Skype employee, if you decide not to exchange eligible options through the Stock Option Exchange Program, you generally will have three months or 90 days from the completion of the sale of Skype to exercise any vested options. Your vested options will only have value if eBay’s stock price is higher than the exercise price during the period in which you are eligible to exercise your vested options. Unvested options will expire upon completion of the sale.
Only you can decide whether or not to participate in the Stock Option Exchange Program.”
My advice: 1. Get a chartered accountant or an employment lawyer to review your situation this month. 2. Skype/eBay HR will brief you; don’t skip the sessions. 3. Draw a timeline showing all the dates and decision points. 4. Test your plan against the scenario where you leave the company. 5. Get your paperwork in early.
Things we don’t know about the sale of Skype.
- Who are the unnamed investors providing the bulk of the $1.9 billion in cash? [Update: We know a little more.]
- Are Skype’s founders among the new investors?
- Which large competitors joined the investor pool?
 Big telecom companies? Cisco? Microsoft? Google? [Update: We don't know who put money into Silverlake Partners]
- Any Recovery.gov funds find their way into the investor pool?
- How is the investor pool structured and divided? Which funds and people own what? [Update: "The CPPIB, which manages retirement funds for Canadians, will put up $300-million in cash for a 15 per cent stake, The Globe and Mail has learned." That's 15% of the 65%.]
- Who will sit on Skype’s board? Who will chair?
- Will Marc Andreessen remain on eBay’s board? Is there a conflict of interest?
- What is the timing? "The transaction, which is not subject to a financing condition, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2009." What are the steps the parties must complete? In what order? By when?
- Do the investors require Skype resolve the Joltid lawsuit before closing?
- What bank is handling the transaction?
- What assets are included in the sale? What intellectual property?
- Are there any regulatory hurdles?
- What secures the "note from the buyer in the principal amount of $125 million"?
- Will employees get a taste of the spinoff capital? Bonuses?
- Will all employees stay or will some return to eBay?
- Why is eBay holding 35%? To reconcile asking and selling price? via @aswath
- Can eBay still IPO its 35% post-sale shares?[Update: Maybe, but the other investors and the company management would have to agree.]
- What is the investors’ exit strategy? IPO? @andyabramson. [Update: Maybe, but eBay and the company management would have to agree.]
- Will the official headquarters remain in Luxembourg? [Update: Yes.]
- If eBay investors are as angry as Om Malik says they should be, can they block the sale? (Shades of Yahoo!-Microsoft)
I don’t work for Skype. Here’s advice I’d give to senior management on how to respond to Google buying On2, which makes Skype’s video engine.
1. It’s a threat. It may not have been Google’s intent, but Skype should consider this an attack by a rival. While the media and the blogosphere have been focusing on On2′s value to YouTube, Google could also apply these resources it to its realtime talk properties (Talk, Voice, Wave) and to the Chrome browser (the better to play/capture videos without an Adobe plug-in).
2. The deal isn’t done. I’m sure the lawyers can cook up ways to interfere, contracts and regulatory influence (monopoly power), perhaps raid the company for talent that doesn’t want to move. The low road. Better to engineer your way out of this exposure by making/buying the talent/technology/IP so you no longer rely upon On2 products.
3. It changes the video codec industry. Google hasn’t had a strong competence in codecs. Until now. They have the potential to promote On2′s codecs by licensing them freely or open sourcing them. That’s how industry de facto standards are made. Two effects: This could drain the swamp as all the small video codec makers starve, going out of this business. Frozen standards may also limit Skype’s ability to innovate around video codecs or strike interoperability deals as Google assumes industry leadership in that technology.
4. Act yesterday. While the deal’s effects are not immediate, Skype’s learning curve may be substantial and you’ll want every day possible to own your core IP. I’m sure you’ve started already.
5. Keep focus. Skype has a diverse product portfolio. An audio/video/signal engineering initiative (a center of excellence? a subsidiary that licenses the technology?) (The Skype Immersive Reality Institute?) could take resources and attention from other strategic investments. Keep balance. The right workflows around product lifecycles and product mix should help keep balance.
6. Short term, this may be a time to negotiate a better deal with On2. You can always leave them behind, but you may want to secure promises of technical support, ongoing maintenance, best prices, continued improvement in the product, etc.
What advice would you add?
tags: skype, video, m&a, google, on2, googletalk, googlevoice, googlewave, adobe, googlechrome, competition, strategy, management
Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.
On behalf of headline writers everywhere, sorry for the fear escalation.
Take a deep breath.
Skype is not shutting down.
All’s running well.
Skype remains very profitable. Likely more than $100 million this year.
Skype has at least 10 months until a court date.
Joltid must prove to a judge that Skype broke a contract.
Joltid must prove the breach in one part of the contract was big enough to justify voiding the whole thing.
Joltid has to prove they were harmed by whatever they claim Skype did.
Joltid has to prove the proper remedy is killing the goose that laid Joltid’s golden egg.
Not easy to do.
But let’s say Joltid beats Skype/eBay in court.
Let’s say the judge tells Skype: stop using Joltid’s code and pay a fine too.
That probably won’t matter.
Skype’s busy making new code.
Skype may even buy code from a Joltid competitor.
Code to swap out sometime in the next 10 months.
So even if Skype loses in court, users keep on Skyping, Skype keeps making money, and everyone’s happy except for the people at Joltid.
Skype knows this.
So they’re working hard to be ready.
In the middle of next year.
Four seasons from now.
So don’t panic.
Don’t fret.
Sleep well.
Keep Skyping.
And don’t forget your towel.
From eBay‘s 2009q2 Form 10Q:
In June 2006, Net2Phone, Inc. filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey (No. 06-2469) alleging that eBay Inc., Skype Technologies S.A., and Skype Inc. infringed five patents owned by Net2Phone relating to point-to-point Internet protocol. The suit seeks an injunction against continuing infringement, unspecified damages, including treble damages for willful infringement, and interest, costs, and fees. We have filed an answer and counterclaims asserting that the patents are invalid, unenforceable, and were not infringed. The parties have completed claim construction briefing and attended a pre-trial conference hearing. The claim construction hearing date has been set for September 2009. The trial date is not yet set. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has accepted reexamination on all five Net2Phone patents that are the subject of the lawsuit. We believe that we have meritorious defenses and intend to defend ourselves vigorously.
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7 years and 1 day since Skype Journal launched as a stand-alone blog.
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Phil Wolff designs and positions realtime collaboration products, finds useful pivots, sees both both forests and trees. Phil advises the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium and is a director of the DataPortability Project. Email editor@skypejournal.com, Skype evanwolf, tweet @evanwolf, G+ or call +1-510-444-8234 to talk with Phil. Skype Journal is independent of Skype.
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