The founders of the P2P VoIP Internet communication service Skype - Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom - have filed a lawsuit against the former chairman of Joost, Michael Volpi, for allegedly stealing trade secrets relating to the P2P technology at the core of Skype and Joost.
Volpi was fired just last week, and at the time Joost announced that it was investigation his actions while he was chief executive and chairman of the Web TV firm. Friis and Zennstrom have already taken legal action against eBay recently through their company Joltid, which they claim owns the technology used by the Skype software.
The auction giant had warned the markets back in July that questions were being raised about the ownership of the technology central to Skype. Plans for an IPO were blocked by a disagreement over patents. eBay originally paid $2.6 billion for Skype.
Result for: service sky
According to an article in the Financial Times, the BBC is planning on bringing a set-top box to the market that will allow iPlayer users to transfer web video to their HDTVs.
The set top box, which will face competition from Apple TV and the newly introduced Roku from Netflix would allow users with broadband connections to have instant IPTV.
Mark Thompson, BBC director-general, added, “There are many things out there in the market but what we haven’t got is a simple standard, to mean that you can get services like iPlayer and Kangaroo.”
It also appears the BBC is talking with content owners hoping to strike deals making their content available. If the set top box does come through, the BBC will most likely more directly compete with BSkyB and its digital video recorder service Sky+.
