Ebay Sued By Net2phone

Looks like a good thing can never last. Everyone’s favorite VoIP company Skype which is owned by Ebay has just been sued by Net2Phone alleging that Skype has infringed its patent for the placing of calls over the net.

The law suit, filed in the US District court of Newark, alleges that Skype infringed a patent filed by Net2Phone under US Patent Class 704, which broadly covers data processing encompassing speech signal processing, linguistics, language translation, and audio compression/decompression. Like any other law suits filed recently the Net2Phone suit is going for broke, seeking damages and an injunction against further infringement, which would basically mean shutting the Skype service down. I guess this is direct fallout of Skype’s decision to offer free incoming calls in the States.