Mike Volpi's battle with his former employer Joost is now headed to court.
Joost announced on Friday that it has filed a lawsuit against Volpi, alleging that the former CEO used trade secrets and other confidential information in a bid to acquire a majority share in Skype from eBay.
The lawsuit comes just days after Joost relieved Volpi of his duties as chairman and a member of the board, saying that it was investigating his actions while he was chairman.
The fracas has its roots in the complicated relationship between online video provider Joost and VoIP provider Skype.
Joost was launched in 2006 by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, who also co-founded Skype. Volpi met and befriended the pair after serving on Skype's board of directors.
Once considered a contender for CEO at his former company Cisco, Volpi was tapped by Friis and Zennstrom to become CEO of Joost in June of 2007.
After a two-year stint, Volpi left Joost this past July to take a position as a partner at the venture capital firm Index Ventures. This same firm was part of a group that made a deal to buy a 65 percent share of Skype from eBay.
The question of Skype ownership between eBay and Friis and Zennstrom has been a dicey one. Though they sold Skype to eBay in 2006, Friis and Zennstrom kept certain rights via a company they formed called Joltid, and claim they still own the core technology and source code behind Skype. A licensing issue between the two companies triggered a suit that's set to hit a U.K. courtroom next summer. And a separate copyright suit was filed by Joltid this week in Northern California alleging Joltid's technology is being infringed on by Skype users "in the United States at least 100,000 times each day."
Joost's lawsuit filed against both Volpi and Index Ventures alleges that Volpi accessed and used confidential information while at Joost to help his group's bid for Skype. It alleges breach of fiduciary duty against Volpi and Index Ventures, aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty against Index, interference with prospective business advantage, misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract against Index, breach of confidence, and civil conspiracy.
Joost is looking for an injunction requiring Volpi and Index Ventures to return all confidential documents and files that were allegedly taken from Joost. The suit also is seeking to prevent both defendants from using the alleged misappropriated trade secrets.
Among the specific claims in the suit:
"This action arises out of the acts of a faithless fiduciary, who has taken advantage of the trust and confidence placed in him to steal confidential, highly proprietary information relating to an extremely popular Internet-based technology...Using that misappropriated information and in utter disregard for his fiduciary obligations, Volpi, acting in concert with other participants, put together a successful bid for Skype that has shocked the investment community."
"Numerous sophisticated strategic bidders (including, among others, Google and Microsoft) who initially expressed an interest in Skype could not get comfortable proceeding with formal bids. The reluctance of these sophisticated parties is hardly surprising given that intellectual property that is essential to Skype's business currently hangs under a cloud of litigation. Yet somehow the successful bidder, led by Volpi, was able to get comfortable with the enormous risks of proceeding with a Skype transaction. That comfort level could have been obtained only with knowledge of and an intent to use confidential information that had been misappropriated by Volpi..."
A phone call placed to Index Ventures for comment was not immediately returned.
Joost was launched more than two years as another portal for online videos but has struggled to gain a foothold in the market against competitors such as YouTube and Hulu.
Note: CBS, which owns CNET News, is investor in Joost.
Eurojust, an EU agency that coordinates judicial cooperation across member states, has significantly altered a statement in which it said criminals were using Skype to avoid detection by the authorities.
One week ago, Eurojust announced it planned to "play a key role in the coordination and cooperation of the investigations on the use of internet telephony systems (VoIP), such as Skype." The agency said its role would be to smooth out the technical and judicial obstacles to the interception of Internet telephony systems, taking into account the various data protection rules and civil rights. Eurojust also said it had become involved at the request of the Italian anti-mafia directorate.
"Skype's encryption system is a secret which the company refuses to share with the authorities," Eurojust's statement of last Friday read. "Investigators have become increasingly reliant on wiretaps in recent years. Customs and tax police in Milan have highlighted the Skype issue. They overheard a suspected cocaine trafficker telling an accomplice to switch to Skype in order to get details of a 2kg drug consignment."
Skype reacted strongly to that statement at the time, saying it remained "interested in working with Eurojust despite the fact that they chose not to contact us before issuing this inaccurate report".
On Wednesday, Eurojust issued an update to its original statement, which was entitled "Eurojust coordinates Internet telephony investigations." The new statement, entitled "Eurojust will be requested to coordinate Internet telephony investigations," makes it clear that the anti-mafia directorate's request for judicial coordination has not yet been made formally.
The Internet telephony-tapping probe is expected to be officially introduced at Eurojust "in the coming weeks or months," a spokesperson for the agency told ZDNet UK on Friday.
In addition, the revised statement made it clear for the first time that the initial meetings between Eurojust and the Italian judicial authorities had taken place in September 2006, and that Skype itself had been present at those discussions.
"Representatives from the company Skype S.A. were invited and present at this meeting," the revised statement reads. "There was a positive message from the Skype representatives during the meeting, showing their commitment to cooperate with the law enforcement authorities in the fight against serious, cross-border organized crime."
In the new statement, references to Skype's alleged refusal to share details of its encryption system have been excised.
Skype has welcomed the revision of the statement. "We are pleased that Eurojust has clarified their previous statement and has recognized our commitment to cooperate with law enforcement authorities, which Skype does as much as is legally and technically possible," it said in a statement on Thursday. "Skype looks forward to working more with Eurojust in the future."
Speaking to ZDNet UK, Eurojust's spokesperson said the original statement had not targeted Skype in particular. "We didn't only speak about Skype; we used Skype as the most known Internet telephony company," the spokesperson said. "There are others--Truphone, instant messaging, and so on."
Asked about the original statement's specific references to Skype and its encryption systems, the spokesperson said: "The first information (was included) as background based on information we got from a police officer in Milan."
ZDNet UK asked whether the removal of the references to Skype meant they had been incorrect, but Eurojust's spokesperson refused to comment.
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