StreamCast Sues eBay for $12.3 Billion

StreamCast Networks, Inc. announced today that it has field suit against eBay and twenty-one other defendants for $12.3 billion in damages for allegedly misappropriating intellectual property.

The Suit , filed earlier in the year against Skype, was amended to include eBay in a filing with the federal court in the central district of California in Los Angeles on Monday.

“The sale of Skype to eBay was made possible through a scheme by many of the defendants to misappropriate the FastTrack peer-to-peer technology that rightfully belongs to StreamCast,” added outside Counsel Dan Woods of the global law firm, White & Case. “We’ve now added eBay as a defendant to this lawsuit.”

The complaint states that the defendants orchestrated an "elaborate over-seas shell game" in an attempt to steal customers and technology from Steamcast. Kazaa co-founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, allegedly sold the FastTrack's P2P technology to Kazaa despite StreamCast having the contractural right to prevent the deal. The technology was and eventually transferred to Skype through a company called Sharman Networks. The complaint also alleges that the defendants also conspired to steal Streamcast's customer base of 28 million users by transferring those customers to Sharman Networks and to another off-shore company, called Blastoise.

The suite seeks at least $4.1 billion for actual damages, at least $12.3 billion in treble damage, and additional funds for other damages and attorneys' fees.You can read the details of the filing here.