Murdoch to sue Skype for use of ‘Sky’ trademark

Skype logo

Skype has faced a number of legal challenges for its use of the word "Sky" in its logo.

The challenges have been mounted by BSkyB, Rupert Murdoch's television company, which has claimed it owns the rights to the Sky trademark.

The law suits came to light when Skype launched a bid earlier this week to raise $100 million in funding.

The filing for the initial public offering showed BSkyB had launched legal battles against the company since 2005 and, although Sky had lost cases in Switzerland, Turkey and Brazil, the European Union had held up the complaint in July.

A spokesperson from BSkyB told The Guardian: "The key contention in the dispute is that the brands Sky and Skype will be considered confusingly similar by members of the public."

"This was supported by consumer research conducted by Sky, and which was taken into account by the relevant authorities when they recently found in Sky's favour."

Although Skype hasn't released a statement since the details emerged, it wrote in the filing: "If BSkyB or other third parties were to pursue litigation to prevent our use of the Skype name or logo, defending against that litigation could be costly and time-consuming even if we were ultimately to prevail."

Jennifer Scott

Jennifer Scott is a former freelance journalist and currently political reporter for Sky News. She has a varied writing history, having started her career at Dennis Publishing, working in various roles across its business technology titles, including ITPro. Jennifer has specialised in a number of areas over the years and has produced a wealth of content for ITPro, focusing largely on data storage, networking, cloud computing, and telecommunications.

Most recently Jennifer has turned her skills to the political sphere and broadcast journalism, where she has worked for the BBC as a political reporter, before moving to Sky News.