More Overture Breakup Lawsuits

from the easy-call dept

When Yahoo bought Overture, one of the first things we mentioned was that people shouldn't just add Overture's revenue to Yahoo's because plenty of Overture's partners would bail out as quickly as possible, since they saw themselves as competitors to Yahoo. It hasn't taken long for that scenario to play out - but it's proving to be a pretty litigious situation. First, T-Online ditched Overture for Google, but Overture sued and won. Now, the same thing is playing out with Lycos, except that Lycos is striking first. They've both dumped Overture for Google and proactively sued them for breach of contract. They claim that Overture needed Lycos' permission before agreeing to the Yahoo acquisition. This might seem like a bit of a stretch at first, but it was apparently in the contract because Lycos wanted to make sure their private info never got into the hands of a list of competitors - with Yahoo at the top of that list. The complaint also alleges (just to make matters more fun) that Overture still owes Lycos nearly a million dollars, and they'd like to see the check pretty damn soon.

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