A Microsoft spokesperson, however, said Motorola is prohibited from acting on the court’s decision because a U.S. court granted Microsoft a restraining order on April 11 to prevent Motorola Mobility from taking action based on the Mannheim court’s ruling.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Not a setback at all. A victory! According to Motorola, anyway.

“We believe that inventors should be paid for their innovations, and the Appellate Court in Karlsruhe, Germany has agreed,” the company said in a statement. “After years of fruitless negotiation with Apple, Motorola Mobility was compelled to bring patent infringement proceedings and enforce a resulting injunction because Apple refused to negotiate a license agreement. MMI’s determination to collect fair compensation for Apple’s use of MMI’s patented technology has now been vindicated by the Appellate Court’s decision, which clarified and confirmed that Apple’s licensing offer to MMI in January is a contractually binding commitment to pay royalties to MMI on all of Apple’s cellular devices.”

That’s some epic spin, right there. Nice to hear that Motorola is as happy with the court’s decision as I imagine Apple is.

The Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court this morning ruled that a standards-essential patent injunction that would have forced Apple to remove its iPhones and iPads from store shelves in Germany cannot be enforced during an appeal. The ruling was issued after the court reviewed the licensing terms Apple offered Motorola Mobility for the standards-essential patents at issue in the case. Those patents are governed by FRAND (fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory) licensing terms and evidently the court felt Apple’s proposal to be reasonable.

“At the current state of the proceedings … Motorola Mobility would violate its duties under antitrust rules if it continues to ask Apple to stop [iPhone and iPad] sales” the court said in a statement.

In other words, that “maximum per-unit royalty of 2.25 percent” that Motorola has been seeking on every iPhone sale isn’t going to fly in Germany. And if Motorola continues to press for it, the company may invite antitrust scrutiny.

For Apple, the ruling, while temporary, is a significant victory, lending credence to its claim that the royalites Motorola is seeking for its standards-essential patents are unfair, unreasonable and discriminatory. For Motorola — and its new owner, Google — it’s a blow that could undermine its legal strategy of seeking injunctive relief based on standards-essential patents. More on that here, from Florian Mueller at FOSS Patents.

The Karlsruhe court believes Apple has made sufficient good faith efforts at licensing the patents at issue in this case that Motorola would be in breach of antitrust regulations if it were to attempt to enforce the December injunction.

Motorola Mobility did not respond to requests for comment.

It’s a definite win for Motorola, particularly if Apple is unable to secure a stay of the injunction during appeal. That said, it may not be quite as bad for Cupertino as it seems. It’s certainly not going to keep the company’s iOS devices out of the single largest market in the EU over the holidays.

Why? Even if Motorola decides to bear the risk of enforcing a ruling that might be overturned later, the injunction applies to the importation of new iOS device shipments. It doesn’t apply to existing inventory. And sources say Apple has plenty of iPhones and iPads on hand in Germany already — enough that it’s not too concerned about losing out on the Christmas consumer binge there. The company even says as much in the brief statement it issued on the matter today.

“We’re going to appeal the court’s ruling right away,” an Apple spokesperson told AllThingsD. “Holiday shoppers in Germany should have no problem finding the iPad or iPhone they want.”

But what about after the holidays, when that inventory begins to run out?

Again, Apple’s fate largely depends on whether it’s able to stay the injunction pending appeal, assuming Motorola attempts to enforce it. Beyond that, there’s the validity of the two 3G patents at issue in the case, and whether or not they are standards-essential and subject to fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing terms. More on that over at FOSS Patents.

What took so long?

Actually, it did not take any time at all for someone to start legal proceedings against the current effort by Yahoo to sell itself.

In this case, no surprise, it is aimed directly at the how of doing it.

In an unusual injunction request, M&C Partners is seeking to enjoin the Silicon Valley Internet giant from using its stringent “no cross talk” rule for its potential buyers to limit possible bidding syndicates.

“The No Cross Talk Provision constitutes an unreasonable anti-takeover device, designed to entrench and favor [Yahoo co-founder, director and major shareholder Jerry] Yang and the current Board,” reads the legal filing, in part.

In addition, M&C does not like what it calls a “Minority Stake Promise,” which it alleges Yahoo is “requiring those who sign the Confidentiality Agreement to use any information they receive to confine themselves to a bid for only a minority stake.”

That refers to the fantastically named PIPE deals — or Private Investment in Public Equity — that PE firms like Silver Lake and TPG Capital have just offered. These are bids to buy 19.9 percent of Yahoo, which will essentially give them a lot of power.

Both allegations are, well, exactly what Yahoo is doing, even if it’s not for the filing’s stated nefarious reason. Thus, M&C doesn’t think that’s okay, presumably because it wants investors to be able to make a deal without Yahoo’s bossy rules.

To be clear, Yahoo is named in lawsuits all the time for a wide variety of things, such as a case in which one group is alleging it botched a deal with the Alibaba Group over its Alipay controversy to another alleging the price it paid for in its recent $270 million acquisition of Interclick was too low.

And so it is here, one of many to come, I suspect. In this one, there’s also a class-action request and various and sundry bashing of Yang, which you can read below:

yhoo

“The court is of the opinion that Apple’s minimalistic design isn’t the only technical solution to make a tablet computer, other designs are possible,” Presiding Judge Johanna Brueckner-Hofmann said in her verdict. “For the informed customer there remains the predominant overall impression that the device looks [like the iPad].”

This is the second time the Düsseldorf Regional Court has upheld this particular injunction, and while it declined to extend the ban to the rest of the European Union as Apple had hoped, it’s still an important victory. Germany is Europe’s third-largest tablet market after Britain and France, according to Strategy Analytics. And as Florian Mueller notes over at FOSS Patents, there’s no quick and easy way for Samsung to have the ban lifted.

“The preliminary injunction stays in force until it is either overturned by the Higher Regional Court in a fast-track appeals proceeding or by the (lower) Regional Court at the end of the full-blown main proceeding, which would probably take about a year,” Mueller explains. “If the outcome of the full-blown main proceeding (including possible appeals of that one to one or two higher courts) is that the preliminary injunction was rightfully granted, it becomes a permanent injunction.”

A Dutch court has ordered an injunction against sales of Samsung’s Galaxy S, Galaxy S II and Ace smartphones across the European Union, after determining the devices violate an Apple software patent entitled “Portable Electronic Device for Photo Management.”

The order, which applies in the Netherlands and any EU country where the patent is registered, will take effect in seven weeks — sometime in mid-October. And when it does, it could prove a logistical nightmare for Samsung, which moves a lot of its European merchandise through the port of Rotterdam.

Doesn’t bode well for Google’s Android OS, either.

“Regardless of how Samsung may be able to work around this decision in Europe, it’s a severe blow for Android,” Florian Mueller writes over at FOSS Patents. “In all likelihood, the winning patent is infringed by Android itself — probably not the operating system per se, but by one or more of the applications that ship with Android and without which the usefulness of Android would be impaired in one particular area (photo viewing). Apple now has the first enforceable court decision in its hand (out of many lawsuits going on around the world) that finds Android to infringe an Apple patent.”

UPDATE:

Samsung, for its part, doesn’t seem too worried about the ruling or the embargo, which it is evidently prepared to work around.

“Today’s ruling is an affirmation that the Galaxy range of products is innovative and distinctive,” the company said in a statement. “With regard to the single infringement cited in the ruling, we will take all possible measures including legal action to ensure that there is no disruption in the availability of our Galaxy smartphones to Dutch consumers. This ruling is not expected to affect sales in other European markets.”

Buried deep in the complaint that led to a preliminary injunction against Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Europe is mention of additional complaints against Motorola and a German company called JAY-tech. Details on the actions are slim, but as FOSS Patents notes, it appears Apple has already won an injunction against whatever tablet JAY-tech had been planning, and is perhaps asking the court for another against the Motorola Xoom, though that’s not at all clear.

Either way, this is a significant escalation of hostilities between the two companies, which until recently were thought to be battling it out in the U.S. over patents related to the iPhone and Motorola’s Droid handsets.

Evidently, customs officials seized “tens of thousands” of PS3s in the Netherlands earlier this week and will do the same to any further shipments that arrive there for the next 10 days. Sony, which ironically begat these hostilities by filing patent-infringement claims seeking to block LG from selling mobile phones in the United States, is said to be frantically working to have the ban repealed.

Reached for comment, Sony had very little to say on the matter. “We’re investigating the situation, but cannot comment on it at this time,” said Dan Race of Sony Computer Entertainment America.

Meanwhile, LG is plotting its next move, which could include a play to have the 10-day import ban extended–or a court order to have the consoles destroyed.

In November, Google sued the Department of Interior, arguing that the Google Apps platform was frozen out of the bidding. Today, a federal judge, Susan Braden, sided with Google by issuing a preliminary injunction preventing the department from deploying Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite. Braden also found that Google had made a preliminary showing that the department had violated a 1984 regulation on competitiveness in government contracts.

Google and a reselling partner, Onix Networking, had argued in court that the Interior Department’s request for bids specifically excluded Google Apps by stating the system had to include the Microsoft product.

The case isn’t over, but it’s certainly not looking good for the Interior Department, which may be forced to reconsider Google Apps for the contract.

A federal court has permanently enjoined the New York company from distributing its software, which lets users upload and download free, often illegal, copies of songs and other media. But earlier this week a new version, “LimeWire Pirate Edition,” surfaced online, purportedly created by a “secret” team of software developers.

“We demand that all persons using the LimeWire software, name, or trademark in order to upload or download copyrighted works in any manner cease and desist from doing so,” said a statement on LimeWire.com. The statement also asserted that the company is “taking all steps to comply with the injunction.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The company and its government-reselling partner Onix Networking have filed suit against the Department of the Interior claiming they’ve been excluded from bidding on a contract to provide email and collaboration technology to the department’s 88,000 employees.

Seems the Department’s Request for Quotations on the project required standardization on Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite, which means Google’s Apps Solution was necessarily shut out of bidding. “Significantly, the SOW (statement of work) and even certain terminology were closely aligned with Microsoft’s product literature for its Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Office Communications Online applications,” Google said in its complaint. “This was because the DOI had defined its needs and requirements around the Microsoft products.” The company argues that’s “unduly restrictive of competition,” and is “arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion, and otherwise contrary to the law.”

As reparation for these offenses, Google wants the DOI to comply with legal requirements for an open and competitive process, and it wants an injunction preventing the department from proceeding any further with the bidding process until it does. “Google is a proponent of open competition on the Internet and in the technology sector in general,” the company said in a statement. “Here, a fair and open process could save US taxpayers tens of millions of dollars and result in better services. We’re asking the Department of Interior to allow for a true competition when selecting its technology providers.”

A bit of a surprise: The company insists that it can keep its remaining employees working on a new music service.

LimeWire confirms that in the wake of last week’s shutdown, it let go of 29 of its 100-person workforce. Here’s CEO George Searle’s statement:

Following the court-ordered injunction, we reduced our work force to extend our runway for bringing our new music service to market.  Letting go of colleagues is never easy.  If we could have brought about another solution, we would have.

I don’t know whether LimeWire’s new service, which the company has been referring to internally as “Grapevine,” will also be based on peer-to-peer technology or not; I should have more on that later. But I do know that the service won’t have any hope of working unless it can get the big music labels to sign on.

That’s theoretically possible, because LimeWire and owner Mark Gorton have talked with the labels about that sort of thing before. But they’ve talked for a very long time, and have never reached a pact in the past.

For now, at least, the labels appear to be set on extracting a very large chunk of Gorton’s hide, via the damages phase in their federal court case. That’s supposed to kick off in January.

The company says it will comply with a court injunction to turn off “the searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality, and/or all functionality” of its software, which remains one of the most popular methods of finding free–and illegal–music on the Web.

That means the company will stop offering downloads of its software, which you could still get on its site as of late Tuesday afternoon. And it also means that the company will disable the software that’s already been downloaded, according to people familiar with LimeWire’s plans.

I don’t know if LimeWire intends to cripple its client via a “kill switch” or some other method, but as of 20 minutes ago it hadn’t gone into effect–I was able to locate and download a version of the Clash’s “I Fought the Law” within a minute of booting up LimeWire’s software. (UPDATE for the technically minded, via a person familiar with the company’s plans: “They’ve taken down the relay severs on the Gnutella network which the Limewire client uses to figure out which other p2p clients have what info on them.” This should render existing clients effectively useless as anything other than a media player within the next nine hours, I’m told.)

LimeWire‘s client has been downloaded “hundreds of millions” of times, and is still responsible for the “vast majority” of usage on the Gnutella trading network, says Eric Garland, who runs the BigChampagne media tracking service. The company’s moves won’t affect other open source clients that run on the same Gnutella network, like FrostWire.

Meanwhile, LimeWire’s parent company, Lime Group, is prepping a new music service that it says will be legal, and should be due out in a month.

But the utility of that service depends on the participation of the big music labels, and at least for now the labels are still trying to extract a big piece of Lime Group’s hide. Court hearings in the damages phase of Lime Group’s hire are scheduled to resume in January. And this statement by industry trade group RIAA makes it clear that the labels aren’t feeling conciliatory:

“For the better part of the last decade, Limewire and Gorton have violated the law. The court has now signed an injunction that will start to unwind the massive piracy machine that Limewire and Gorton used to enrich themselves immensely. In January, the court will conduct a trial to determine the appropriate level of damages necessary to compensate the record companies for the billions and billions of illegal downloads that occurred through the Limewire system.”

Today’s announcement comes after Lime and the labels spent weeks trying to negotiate an out-of-court settlement; Federal District Court judge Kimba Wood actually handed down the injunction in August.

Here’s LimeWire CEO George Searle’s description of events, via  blog post:

As of today, we are required to stop distribution and support of LimeWire’s P2P file-sharing service as a result of a court-ordered injunction.

Naturally, we’re disappointed with this turn of events. We are extremely proud of our pioneering history and have, for years, worked hard to bridge the gap between technology and content rights holders. However, at this time, we have no option but to cease further distribution and support of our software.

It’s a sad occasion for our team, and for you–the hundreds of millions of people who have used LimeWire to discover new things.

While we have enabled open sharing and discovery for the past decade, LimeWire is mostly the product of the people who used it. You made LimeWire. Thank you for letting us being part of that. Your support and enthusiasm has fueled everything that we do.

During this challenging time, we are excited about the future. The injunction applies only to the LimeWire product. Our company remains open for business.

We remain deeply committed to working with the music industry and making the act of loving music more fulfilling for everyone – including artists, songwriters, publishers, labels, and of course music fans.Our team of technologists and music enthusiasts are creating a completely new music service that puts you back at the center of your digital music experience.

We’ll be sharing more details about our new service and look forward to bringing it to you in the future.

And here’s a LimeWire PR rep’s description of what’s going on:

As a result of a court ordered injunction, we are required to disable “the searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality, and/or all functionality” of LimeWire’s P2P file-sharing software.

Please note LimeWire’s official statement on this legal development is as follows:

“While this is not our ideal path, we hope to work with the music industry in moving forward.  We look forward to embracing necessary changes and collaborating with the entire music industry in the future.”  – LimeWire Spokesperson.

An important point of clarification, LimeWire is not “shutting down”, in specific regarding our software, we are compelled to use our best efforts cease support and distribution of the file-sharing software, along with increased filtering.  And, that is what we are doing.

“We continue to analyze the potential merits of their claims, the potential defenses to such claims and potential counter claims, and the possibility of a license agreement as an alternative to litigation,” the company said. “However, there can be no assurance that this claim will not lead to litigation in the future.”

Well, looks like the claim has indeed lead to litigation, and litigation from a formidable opponent, too: Microsoft (MSFT).

On Thursday, the software behemoth filed suit against Salesforce, accusing the company of infringing nine patents describing things like “Method and system for stacking toolbars in a computer display” and “System and method for controlling access to data entities in a computer network.”

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, seeks an injunction against Salesforce and unspecified monetary damages.

“Microsoft has been a leader and innovator in the software industry for decades and continues to invest billions of dollars each year in bringing great software products and services to market,” Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft’s deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing, said in a statement. “We have a responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard that investment, and therefore cannot stand idly by when others infringe our IP rights.”

An interesting move for Microsoft, which doesn’t typically initiate patent litigation. Though it has been sued many times for patent infringement over the years, the company has only filed a handful of IP suits itself.

That said, Microsoft and Salesforce have been competing more aggressively in the cloud-based CRM space recently.

Salesforce.com declined comment on the suit.

The Swedish site has been out all morning. TorrentFreak pins the outage on legal pressure from Hollywood studios, via an injunction granted by a German court against broadband provider CB3ROB, which had been routing the site’s traffic to the Web.

But if you’re looking to nab free music and movies via the site’s BitTorrent hub, you probably won’t have to wait long. As CNET points out, The Pirate Bay has lost bandwidth providers in the past and usually pops back up in fairly short order.

Meanwhile, if you want to grab your stuff via other means, there are plenty of options. LimeWire, for instance, which lost what appears to be a significant court case last week, is still up and running.

“We’ve been pushing the state-of-the-art in every facet of design….We’ve been innovating like crazy for the last few years on this and we’ve filed for over 200 patents for all of the inventions in iPhone. And we intend to protect them.”

– Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Jan. 9, 2007

Asked for his thoughts on iPhone rivals during a January 2009 earnings call, Apple COO Tim Cook said the company would not stand for having its intellectual property ripped off.

“We are watching the landscape,” Cook said. “We like competition, as long as they don’t rip off our IP, and if they do, we’re going to go after anybody that does….We think competition is good; it makes it us all better. But we’re ready to suit up and go against anyone.”

Well, looks like Apple (AAPL) is suiting up, and against a big opponent. This morning, the iPhone maker filed suit against HTC, a Taiwanese handset manufacturer that makes a number of Android smartphones, including the operating system’s marquee device, Google’s Nexus One (Read the suits in their entirety here.)

In a lawsuit filed concurrently with the U.S. International Trade Commission and U.S. District Court in Delaware, Apple alleges that HTC infringed some 20 patents related to the iPhone’s graphical user interface, underlying architecture and hardware. The company is asking for a permanent injunction barring HTC from importing or selling infringing phones in the U.S., along with triple damages and maximum interest.

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a press release announcing the action. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

HTC appears to have been totally blindsided by the suit. As of this writing, it hasn’t even been served.

“We only learned of Apple’s actions based on Apple’s press release,” the company said in a statement. “We have not been served any papers yet so we are in no position to comment on the claims. We respect and value patent rights but we are committed to defending our own innovations. We have been innovating and patenting our own technology for 13 years.”

It’s not yet clear whether Google (GOOG) is implicated here. But it certainly seems possible. After all, HTC manufactures a number of Android devices, and while Google insisted at the Nexus One launch that it didn’t design the device, the search giant clearly played a role in its development.

Of course, it could be that Apple is suing HTC because it can’t, for some reason, sue Google. More details to follow once I’ve read through the suits.

Further Reading:

• Apple Sues HTC [Complete Court Filings]
• Why HTC, Apple? And Why Now?
• Apple vs. Google: Game On

On Friday, Judge Marilyn Patel, who in 2000 issued the injunction that shut Napster down, dismissed Real’s antitrust claims against Disney (DIS) and other movie studios over their alleged collusion to block RealDVD, the company’s “legal” DVD ripper.

The studios and the DVD Copy Control Association, she found, were well within their rights to band together to prevent what they believed to be illegal copying of their content. Real was foolish to think otherwise, and its claim that it has suffered significant losses because of its inability to sell a product of questionable legality is, in a word, ludicrous.

Which is not to say that consumers should not have the right to copy and back up films they have legally purchased, just that the courts have never looked favorably on those who claim that right through a technology that bypasses DVD copy protection and consequently violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

“Real’s purported injury stems from its own decision to manufacture and traffic in a device that is almost certainly illegal under the DMCA,” Patel wrote. “In the circumstances of this case, there is no allegation Real could make that would give it antitrust standing.”

Court Opinion Dismissing Realnetworks Antitrust Case

PREVIOUSLY:

• RealNetworks Still Barred From the DVD Backup Business. Why Does RealNetworks Want to Be in the DVD Backup Business?
• RealDVD Launch Buffering…Buffering…
• Rent. Rip. Restraining Order.
• StealDVD? Well, You Were Asking for It…
• Sue. Rent. Rip. Return.
• Rent. Rip. Return.

Today, the Finnish cellphone giant, which has been struggling to develop a worthy competitor to the iPhone, filed suit against Apple, claiming the popular smart phone infringes upon a number of Nokia patents.

Specifically at issue here: 10 patents covering various wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption technologies. Nokia claims that every iPhone model shipped since 2007 has violated them.

“The basic principle in the mobile industry is that those companies who contribute in technology development to establish standards create intellectual property, which others then need to compensate for,” said Ilkka Rahnasto, vice president of legal & intellectual property at Nokia (NOK). “Apple is also expected to follow this principle. By refusing to agree appropriate terms for Nokia’s intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia’s innovation.”

To that point, Nokia says it has entered into license agreements with about 40 companies for these patents. Only Apple (AAPL) has refused. The obvious endgame here, then, is to force the iPhone maker to change its mind.

“We believe that Nokia is not seeking an injunction; rather, we believe that the company has been in talks with Apple concerning a patent royalty payment for over a year,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said in a bulletin to clients. “With today’s announcement, it appears that the companies have not come to a resolution and Nokia is attempting to hasten the process. Nokia is likely looking to obtain a patent royalty of 1-2 percent ($6 to $12) on every iPhone sold in compensation for its IPs concerning GSM, 3G and WiFi technologies on mobile devices.”

Interesting that news of the suit comes just days after Apple announced its most successful financial quarter ever at a time when Nokia is posting nasty losses.

I’ve asked Apple for comment and will update here if I’m offered one.

The suit, over Joltid-owned peer-to-peer technology used in Skype’s software, seeks an injunction against Skype as well as damages that Joltid claims “are amassing at a rate of more than $75 million daily.”

A nasty surprise for Skype’s new owners: Silver Lake, the Silicon Valley-based private equity group; Index Ventures, the London-based venture capital firm; Internet entrepreneur Marc Andreessen’s new Andreessen Horowitz fund; and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Though, really they should have seen this coming. After all, Skype and Joltid have been sparring since earlier this year.

From an eBay Securities and Exchange Commission filing earlier this year:

As previously disclosed, Skype has been in a dispute with the licensor of certain key technologies and had terminated a “standstill” agreement that had been entered into between the parties, permitting either to take action against the other with effect from March 2009. On March 12, 2009, Skype Technologies S.A. filed a claim in the English High Court of Justice (No. HC09C00756) against Joltid Limited, a BVI company.

In connection with the license agreement between the two companies, Skype licenses peer-to-peer communication technology from Joltid, and Joltid has claimed that Skype has breached the terms of the license agreement. Following the filing of the claim, Joltid purported to terminate the license agreement. In particular, Joltid has alleged that Skype should not possess, use or modify certain software code (the “Code”) and that, by doing so, and by disclosing the Code in certain U.S. patent cases, pursuant to orders from U.S. courts, it has breached the license agreement.

On the basis of, among other things, the parties’ mutual dealings since the execution of the licence agreement, Skype is asking the English High Court for declaratory relief, including findings that:

(i) Skype is lawfully accessing, in possession of, using and modifying the Code so that Skype is not in breach of the license agreement with Joltid and accordingly Joltid’s notice of breach and subsequent notice of termination are invalid;

(ii) Skype lawfully disclosed the Code in the U.S. patent cases so that Skype is not in breach of the license agreement with Joltid and accordingly Joltid’s notice of breach and subsequent notice of termination are invalid; and

(iii) Joltid has certain indemnity obligations in relation to the U.S. patent proceedings.

Although Skype is confident of its legal position, as with any litigation there is the possibility of an adverse result if the matter is not resolved through negotiation. In such event, Skype would be adversely affected and the continued operation of Skype’s business as currently conducted would likely not be possible.

Perhaps this is why we saw so few bidders for Skype?