...com

 The lawsuit follows another filed this week by Skype
founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, accusing eBay and a
group of potential investors, including Index Ventures, of
technology theft. [ID:nLH288426]

 The legal battles threaten to disrupt eBay's sale of a
majority stake in Skype to the investor consortium for $1.9
billion. They also underscore the acrimony between Skype's
founders and Volpi, a former high-flyer at Cisco Systems Inc
() whom they had known for years.

 Volpi had served on Skype's board and the pair of
entrepreneurs recruited him to head another company they
founded, the Web TV venture Joost.

 The founders said in Friday's lawsuit that Volpi
misappropriated confidential information as he moved from Joost
to Index Ventures, and helped orchestrate its bid for Skype.

 "Volpi has maliciously and willfully breached his fiduciary
duties," the plaintiffs said in their complaint.

 Volpi could not be reached for comment, while Index
Ventures declined to comment.

 At the heart of those lawsuits is the peer-to-peer
technology that is used to deliver video and phone services
over the Internet.

 Joltid, yet another company the two entrepreneurs founded,
sued eBay and the investor consortium earlier this week,
claiming that Skype was using this proprietary technology
without authorization. Joltid and Skype have also been in a
legal battle in Britain over rights to the technology.

 BUYING SKYPE

 Sources last week said Zennstrom and Friis had previously
contacted several private equity firms to try to buy back their
old business, Skype.

 Ebay, however, agreed to sell a 65 percent stake in Skype
to the consortium including Index, private equity firm Silver
Lake, Netscape founder Marc Andreessen's Andreessen Horowitz
and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. [ID:nN01483742]

 Friday's lawsuit said Volpi's knowledge of the confidential
information had played a key role in the consortium's bid.

 "Volpi and Index lacked the credibility and financial heft
to lead a private equity investment consortium to acquire Skype
unless and until they advertised their knowledge of the
Confidential Information," it said.

 Volpi was once regarded as a potential CEO candidate at
Cisco, and many in Silicon Valley had looked on with worry at
his tenure at Joost since June 2007. Although the company was a
pioneer in bringing popular TV shows and movies to the Web, it
struggled to tie key programming deals and find revenue.

 He stepped down from his CEO role in late June, while the
company cut jobs and scaled back its services. He initially
stayed on as chairman, but was removed from that role days ago
and Joost had said it was investigating his actions.

 The latest lawsuit also blamed Volpi for burning through a
substantial amount of working capital with little success.

 "Volpi's overall business strategy failed. Moreover, it was
a failure that was extremely expensive, with Joost expending
tens of millions of dollars of investors' capital," it said,
adding that he, meanwhile, collected confidential information.
 (Reporting by Ritsuko Ando, editing by Matthew Lewis)