eBay Bought not Skype but only a License to use it for VoIP and IM
December 13th, 2006 by Gordon Cook
When eBay “bought” Skype for 2.6 billion, it bought only a license and not the underlying technology. I can’t help but wonder - Whatever were they thinking and why doesn’t anyone know?
Way back on July 24 Business Week wrote: “Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the entrepreneurs who created the pioneering Web applications Kazaa and Skype, are working on a new communications venture, BusinessWeek.com has learned. The pair plans to develop software for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the Web, according to people familiar with the matter.” For the full article click here.
Mentioned this belatedly to my mail list and James Enck reponded with a rather stunning comment: “What’s really funny about this whole situation is that eBay did not actually acquire Skype’s underlying technology when it plopped down $2.6bn last year. This information is in the public domain (in SEC filings I linked to on my blog a year ago, and also highlighted by others), but it’s surprising how few people seem to know it. Zennstrom and Friis housed the IPR in another company, called Joltid. eBay acquired Skype Technologies, which has an exclusive license from Joltid in perpetuity to offer voice and video calling, presence and IM. That’s it. The TV angle was one which I and a lot of other people anticipated, but which eBay seems to have missed, and so Zennstrom and Friis get to effectively recycle the same platform for a third incarnation via this loophole in the license… ”
Pays to be an FOJ (friend of James). 
James sent me two additional pointers. In a comment last Feb 23 James points out that Skype does what it does via a license.
As quoted at Footnotes to history
“In November 2003, Skype signed an agreement with a software development company which granted Skype a perpetual non exclusive license on its software, with exclusive use of the software for the limited purpose of providing P2P telephony, multi-directional video communications between end users via the internet. The founders of this software company are also founding shareholders (and senior management) of Skype. [snip]”
On October 5, 2006 Om Mailik confirmed this with an article called Five Questions with Skype co-founder Janus Frii . Therein we read: “JF: Kazaa and Skype were based on a piece of technology called the “Global Index.†Skype basically built a communication layer on top of that. That technology has evolved since then, and the Venice Project, is built on that global index and we have developed a P2P video streaming layer on top of that core technology. (*)”
“(*) Om’s Notes: The Global Index mentioned by Janus is actually Joltid Global Index Software that is owned by a company called Joltid Limited, in which Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis have an equity interest. The company was not part of the Skype-Ebay transaction.”
Meanwhile the Venice Project is in beta test.
eBay analysts might well be asking what it is that eBay actually owns. Business Week wrote:
STILL AT SKYPE. According to Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesperson, Zennstrom and Friis were always expected to look into new ventures because that’s what they do well. “We have encouraged those guys to explore different ideas and different concepts that they find interesting,” Durzy said. [Snip]
“EBay had no immediate comment on the new video distribution project and whether the project had any direct or indirect relationship with eBay and Skype. But eBay CEO Meg Whitman said in a recent interview with BusinessWeek that the Skype founders remained committed to Skype. “They are really engaged. They were all fired up,” she said, after meeting with them during a recent trip to London.”
COOK’s Edge: Why hasn’t anyone ever asked eBay what it was thinking when it paid 2.6 billion for a very nice house while leaving the foundation in the hands of the original owners?