It’s difficult to say whether or not Niklas Zennström, founder of Skype who also created Kazaa, had envisioned that his software would one day be drug through the courts over GPL violations, but that is what has happened recently. Skype has recently lost an appeals court decision in a German court over GPL violations with its SMC network.
Heise online is reporting that Skype Limited lost in the Munich appeals court. Skype argued that the GPL license violated German anti-trust laws. In response, the judge said that even if the GPL license was not valid in Germany, Skype had no right to use and sell the GPL software.
The suite was filed by Linux copyright holder Harald Welte. “In the end, the court hinted twice that if it was to judge about the case, Skype would not have very high chances. After a short break,” Welte commented on his blog, “Skype decided to revoke their appeals case and accept the previous judgement of the lower court (Landgericht Muenchen I, the decision was in my favor) as the final judgement. This means that the previous court decision is legally binding to Skype, and we have successfully won what has probably been the most lengthy and time consuming case so far.”
Heise further reported the following:
Harald Welte’s lawyer, Till Jaeger, explained to heise open that an out-of-court settlement had been reached with telephone manufacturer SMC Networks. There are two important aspects to the standing ruling: on the one hand, this is the first time a foreign company has been found guilty of a GPL violation in Germany. On the other hand, the court has set a very high standard by interpreting the GPL to the letter of the license text. The court ruled that providing the source code on the internet was not adequate in the case of a VoIP telephone and that a general note regarding the GPL and LGPL software was not specific enough.
Skype withdrew it’s appeals and accepted the lower court ruling from last Summer.
In 2005, eBay acquired Skype for $2.6 billion. CNet noted two years later that eBay was unhappy with what they got out of the deal two year later.
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