23 January 2007

LOS ANGELES - A federal judge has thrown out an antitrust lawsuit filed by the distributor of Morpheus file-sharing software against Internet phone service provider Skype Technologies SA, eBay Inc. and other defendants.

StreamCast Networks Inc. had sought more than $4.1 billion in unspecified damages and a court order blocking eBay from selling Skype services. StreamCast claimed the founders of Skype broke an agreement to give StreamCast the right of first refusal for the technology behind Skype's Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, service.