The long standing legal stand off between Skype, a leading online communications network and one of the largest online shopping websites, eBay has finally come to end with the founders of Skype being awarded a 14% stake in the company along with two seats on Skype’s board of directors. eBay retains 30% rights on Skype. The private investors, who helped Skype reach a global platform will have a 56% stake in the now divided company. The settlement also calls for an immediate drop of the lawsuit, that the Skype founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis had brought upon eBay and a host of investors who had announced their intentions to buy 65% of Skype.

According to John J. Donahoe (CEO, eBay).

“Skype will be well positioned to move forward under new owners with ownership and control over its core technology. At the same time, eBay continues to retain a significant stake in Skype and will benefit from its continued growth. We look forward to closing the deal and focusing on growing our core e-commerce and payments businesses.”

However, one of the primary investors of Skype, Index Ventures, the venture capital firm that spawned the buyout offers for Skype and led to the grueling court room battle has decided to recede from the deal struck between Skype, eBay and the investors. Index Venture has stated that the deal does not match the company’s financial criteria and thus the firm has chosen to distance itself from the deal altogether.

Now that Skype is free of legal hassles, the global online communications service can finally look forward to innovate and create better ways of communications for the users. While Skype was busy tussling it out in court room arena, significant developments have taken place, that will surely compel the company to quickly get its act together and start building for the future. The emergence of Google Voice as a stark competitor in the international calling domain should be enough to get the spirit of competition back to Skype. Furthermore, the launch of new smart phones that are capable of running Skype, rather than on PCs, further gives the company a reason to innovate and grab the profits off the wireless online communication domain.

Via ZDNet.