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Well guys, it’s safe to say that we’re finally in the clear.

For awhile there things looked pretty bad for Skype (news, site), as eBay and the platform’s original co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis battled it out over legal issues.

The whole sitch started looking up a couple weeks ago when the opposing sides finally came to an agreement, granting Skype ownership of critical software. The settlement opened up some doors, and last Thursday eBay sold a 70 percent stake in the company for somewhere around US$ 1.9 billion up front with another US$ 125 million on the way. The remaining 30 percent stays with eBay.

Well kids, it looks like it’s come down to official legal charges. Again. That is to say, Skype (news, site) founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstr

A morning's worth of output from the Espresso Book Machine, which used Google Books as the source of the data.

(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET)

Google is hell-bent on digitizing the world’s books, but it’s also aware that sometimes you just want to turn the pages.

On Demand Books, makers of the Espresso Book Machine, are expected to announce Thursday that they have been granted access to Google’s library of public domain digital books for use with their product. The Espresso Book Machine can print a 300-page book in four minutes, complete with a cover and a bound edge. It ranges in price from $75,000 to $97,000, depending on the configuration, and is found mostly at universities, libraries, and institutions around the globe.

The machine has been around for a while, earning a “Best Invention of the Year” award from Time Magazine in 2007. And the concept of using smaller on-demand printers is also old: Barnes and Noble was playing around with the idea 10 years ago, and publishers have long wanted a system that would allow them to match book supply and book demand more closely.

A few publishers, such as Lightning Source, a division of Ingram Book Group, have signed up with On Demand Books to allow their titles to be printed by the machine, but adding Google’s public domain library dramatically increases what is available through one of the machines, said Dane Neller, chief executive officer of On Demand Books. Around 2 million public domain works have been scanned by Google, while On Demand Books offers 1.5 million titles through its existing agreements.

One way of thinking about Google’s Book Search project is that it creates opportunities for other companies to develop businesses around new ways of distributing and consuming books, since a digital book is nothing but a large file. While things like the Kindle show that people are interested in acquiring and reading digital books in digital form, the Espresso Book Machine allows authors and publishers to reach an audience that isn’t ready for a digital book reader without having to spend the money required for a full-scale printing run of a book with limited appeal.

Of course, Google’s participation in On Demand Books’ service only involves public domain books, which don’t inspire nearly as much controversy as the out-of-print yet copyright protected books at issue in Google’s settlement with book authors and publishers. It’s not clear whether if the proposed settlement is approved in October, On Demand Books (and other such publishers) will have access to those books; a Google representative said that would be “speculation” at the moment.

Originally posted at Relevant Results

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Near-instant book printer adds Google Books titles

Updated at 5:10 p.m. PDT with eBay comment.

Joltid, a peer-to-peer software company established by Skype’s founders, filed a copyright suit against Skype Wednesday alleging Joltid’s technology is being infringed on by Skype users “in the United States at least 100,000 times each day.”

Just the latest in an ongoing license dispute between the popular VoIP service and its developers, the lawsuit, filed in Northern California U.S. District Court, seeks an injunction and damages, which Joltid “reasonably believes are amassing at a rate of $75 million daily,” according to the suit.

Also listed as defendants are Skype’s current owner eBay, as well as investors in a consortium that earlier this month signed a deal with eBay to acquire a 65 percent stake in Skype, with eBay retaining 35 percent.

“Skype has infringed Joltid’s copyrights,” a company spokesman said in a statement. “Joltid will vigorously enforce its copyrights and other intellectual property rights in all of the technologies it has innovated.”

“Their allegations and claims are without merit and are founded on fundamental legal and factual errors,” eBay spokesman John Pluhowski said in a statement.

The lawsuit has the potential to at least complicate the ongoing sale of Skype. In the past, however, eBay has said it’s working on its own software to replace what it gets from Joltid.

In 2006, eBay bought Skype for $2.6 billion, but co-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom retained the rights to Skype’s key peer-to-peer technology–Global Index Software–via the Joltid company they formed.

Joltid terminated its license for the software after learning that Skype had allegedly acquired unauthorized versions of the source code, made unauthorized modifications, and disclosed the software to third persons, according to the lawsuit.

The two companies have been involved in a separate lawsuit in the U.K. over that license termination, but the case isn’t set to go to trial until June 2010. Referring to that suit, eBay’s SEC filing regarding the sale of Skype says “consummation of the deal was subject to ‘no settlement of the pending litigation with Joltid Limited having been effected without the consent of the Buyer (subject to certain limitations).’”

The other defendants in the suit filed Wednesday are Silver Lake Partners, Index Ventures Management, Michaelangelo Volpi, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. This lawsuit was first reported Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal.

Excerpted from:
Skype founders file copyright suit against Skype

Trying to weed through the 50 companies that launched over the past two days is overwhelming for you, and us. As done in years past, we’ve picked five of our favorites from TechCrunch50. These are all consumer-oriented services that bring innovative ideas to the table and have a good chance at succeeding.

Note: CNET’s judges for this article were Josh Lowensohn (me) and Caroline McCarthy, both of whom watched all 50 on-stage pitches.

Story Something

Story Something is one of the few kid-oriented products we’ve seen in the past few years that doesn’t have some crazy scheme with virtual worlds, virtual currency, or a way to suck kids dry of their hard-earned allowances. Instead, Story Something is set up to create personalized stories for kids that the parent can set up and read with minimal effort.

Much like Mad Libs, parents can insert the name of their child, and things they can relate to (like their friends, or parent’s names) into an existing work. The service then goes through existing stories and inserts the names. Children also have the option of picking what happens next if it’s a multipart story, akin to the Choose Your Own Adventure series.

Stories can be printed, and e-mailed for reading on mobile devices and e-readers like the Kindle. It even includes illustrations in these copies. As a time saver, the service can also be set up to e-mail you new stories as they come in, using information about your family that you set up in previous sessions.

The service is currently in private beta, and is planning to have a free version with a handful of sample stories, as well as a premium version which includes a full library of content for $3 a month.

ToyBots Woozees

ToyBots Woozees isn’t a product as much as a platform. Think of it like Teddy Ruxpin, but Internet-enabled, and available in a whole slew of smart toys. ToyBots wants to get toy manufacturers using their standardized firmware, which lets toy owners swap personalities, and run downloaded software like games and stories.

This whole idea of shared content is hosted on a large network, kind of like Apple’s iPhone and iPod App Store, so that games you buy for one device can work for another. It also lets third-party developers program new ways for consumers to interact with that old toy.

As a business this can bring something toy makers don’t currently have with most stuffed animals: a revenue flow post-purchase. Instead of relying on accessories like additional outfits, and other characters, they can make money off software sales. Of course before this happens, ToyBots has to get toy manufacturers on board.

ToyBots envisions a future full of toys that share a similar hardware profile, letting users swap personalities among their Web-enabled stuffed animals.

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

Spawn Labs

Spawn Labs was pitched as a “Slingbox for video games” and that’s exactly what it does. The $199 box is a one-time purchase that users hook up to their home game console and their Internet connection. It then lets them play video games from any Internet-enabled computer as if they were playing it on their home TV.

The service has three big things going for it: One is that it pipes the content in 720p HD, which is the proper size for most laptops and what its creators tell us is as good as you can get for real-time streaming without bulging the price tag to around $5,000. It’s also a one-time purchase, which means there’s no monthly service fee beyond whatever you’re paying for electricity and Internet. And, the company tells me it plans to offer compatibility with future game consoles through updated hardware drivers, meaning that you can buy the box now and not worry about having to upgrade it when the next generation of consoles arrives.

Considering it costs close to what most current-generation game consoles do, it may be a hard sell, but after having tried it out at the company’s demo booth we definitely want one–and think many other gamers, and people in one-TV households will as well.

Spawn Labs' box can hook up to your game console and let you play your own games over the Web, free of charge. All you need to buy is the box.

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

SeatGeek

Similar to what Bing Travel (formerly Farecast) does with airplane pricing forecasts, SeatGeek does for other types of tickets like concerts and sporting events. The service doesn’t do this for main ticket providers though. Instead it tracks prices on secondary markets like Craigslist and StubHub where tickets are being resold, then tells you whether the price is set to go up or down with 80 percent certainty.

Where this service has the most potential to succeed is helping people who don’t know a great deal about a particular event they want tickets to. It’s taking the guesswork out of the buying process, as well as instilling extra confidence in transactions where people would have otherwise been reluctant to spend a few hundred dollars.

It’s also got the makings of a great business. According to its founders, it’s already become profitable based on a small scale alpha test.

SeatGeek can predict whether a ticket to a concert or sports game is going up or down, just like some travel sites do with airplane tickets.

(Credit: CNET)

AnyClip

AnyClip was the only video platform introduced at this year’s show. It solves a really basic problem of helping people find specific parts of a movie, then sharing it elsewhere.

In the early days of YouTube, before the site really started locking down on copyrighted material, this was common practice. AnyClip’s (legal) answer to that is getting the studios on board, with the promise of reinvigorating DVD sales and interest in a large back catalog of movies–all of which are linked to sales sites like iTunes and Amazon where users can buy a full copy of the content.

Right now it has a database of around 100 films, all of which are split up into four minutes or less clips. It has a group of users that are going into full film files and tagging specific moments so that its search engine can index them. The service eventually plans to expand into other types of media like TV shows and sporting events.

AnyClip can pull up short clips from a large catalog of films. Perfect for when you're trying to remember a movie line or action-packed moment.

(Credit: CNET)

Click here to see our complete coverage of the show.

Originally posted at Web Crawler

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Best of show: Our top five from TechCrunch50