Why Skype Founders Paid Millions In Kazaa Suit

The Skype co-founders last week personally paid millions of dollars in the over $100 million plus settlement against Kazaa, which they also co-founded. Why did they fork over such big bucks, when they had sold the company long ago and are no longer liable? Merely so they could enter the U.S., fear-free. Reuters reports that Skype and Kazaa co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis have avoided traveling to the U.S. since the music and movie industries filed suit against Kazaa.

Zennstrom and Friis had long before sold Kazaa to Sharman Networks. But they feared that if they set foot in the U.S., Reuters says, they might have been served with legal papers, and they wanted to avoid that at all costs.

Considering that they had sold Skype to eBay for $2.6 billion, and eBay is based in the U.S., it certainly made dealing with the mother ship somewhat tough.

Now, I've heard a lot of excuses for why employees and execs have had to miss meetings, but fear of setting foot in the country because they might be served with papers was never one of them.

No one is revealing how much money they paid as part of the suit, but I'd guess it was a big chunk. And it's probably money well-spent. They have incentives built into the eBay buyout, and these days Skype hasn't been necessarily hitting them.Now that they can travel to the U.S., it'll be easer to have face-to-face meetings with eBay execs and potential business partners. And yes, I know you can use Skype for videoconferencing, but being live, and being Skyped are two different things entirely.

So my guess is we'll be seeing a lot more of the Skype founders on the U.S. shores...and they've certainly paid through the nose for the rights to land here.