Net2Phone Wants Some Of Skype's eBay Loot, Too

from the and-so-it-goes dept

Considering how much eBay paid for Skype, it’s no surprise that lots of companies are gunning for the company in some form or another. The latest is that VoIP firm Net2Phone, who has been around forever, is accusing Skype (and eBay) of violating its patents on point to point internet calling. The company is claiming lots of lost revenue because of this. Of course, it might make you wonder, if Net2Phone is so upset about lost revenue, why didn’t they build Skype themselves and capture all that revenue when they had such a huge headstart?


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Comments on “Net2Phone Wants Some Of Skype's eBay Loot, Too”

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16 Comments
ScaredofTheMan says:

Man These guys have some nerve. IDT Net2Phones parent company sold it During the DotCom Boom for $1Billion dollars, then after ATT completely failed to leverage it for fear cutting into their traditional Longdistance business they sold it back to IDT for pennys on the dollar. AND NOW, they woke up one morning and think….hey…Ebay…skype.. $4billion… Gimme Gimme gimme!

Bah says:

So what. Skype is shit now that they charge you for calls. There’s no point in having it anymore. It was fun back when it let you call anyone you wanted without having to make a purchase first, but they got money hungry like all other internet businesses, and now I as well as everyone else I know has deleted Skype off their computer because it no longer serves a purpose.

flan4u (user link) says:

Net2phone was great

I loved net2phone until IDT bought them out. They were great. After IDT they got better and added services for a short time, but then started charging more and more and removing service options so I stop using them for even a phone card (one of the lowest available for awhile).

Now for the patent issue. Shouldn’t ATT be suing the bunch of them for point to point VOIP if a penny is to be made? “Speak Freely” was the first mainstream VOIP app. that I’m aware of, and doesn’t that date back to about 1979?

I rarely, but do occasionally use it still, but it is a pain trying to tell someone how to setup pass through etc… on there broadband router and modem to use it. It just worked with dial-up, and fairly well. It’s as clear as a land-line on even slow DSL and decent on 56k.

Haven’t all of these companies just added a better front-end and expanded options to an existing technology?

And why would net2phone deserve a paycheck for poor salesmanship? If both vendors offer similar services with similar rates and similar quality, then it comes down to marketing and customer satisfaction.

By the way, Speak Freely is still free, and the calls to anywhere are also free, you just have to tinker with it and your router etc.. a bit, but it;s worth every penny being free :

angry dude says:

nothing's unexpected

I correctly predicted in Wikipedia’s Skype entry about a week ago that Skype is going to be sued for IP violations.

Now that prediction of mine is a reality.

Ha-Ha-Ha-har-Har-ha-Ha-ah …………………..

(I am not connected to fucking Skype or Net2fuckingPhone in any way…Have a good day, people of techdirt…)

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