According to an AP news report, U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper has dismissed the more than $4.1 billion antitrust lawsuit filed by StreamCast Networks against VoIP service provider Skype (News - Alert), eBay and more than a dozen defendants.

StreamCast, a distributor of Morpheus file-sharing software, challenged in court that it had rights to the FastTrack/Kazaa P2P software engine on which it contends that Morpheus is based.

The VoIP service provider was hit with the charges back in March 2006, as it was named, along with a group of assorted companies, in a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) case brought by StreamCast in California.

With the lawsuit, StreamCast was seeking to halt eBay’s (News - Alert) Skype business. According to the AP report, the company also claimed in the lawsuit that “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.”

According to the AP, StreamCast claimed that Skype’s founders broke an agreement to give the company the right of first refusal for the technology behind Skype’s VoIP service. According to the report, the judge however, found StreamCast failing to “make its case for relief under federal antitrust laws.” This made Cooper dismiss the case.

Want to learn more about VoIP? Then, you can’t miss the INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO East, taking place this week, January 23-26, 2007 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Be sure to also check out Rich Tehrani’s view of VoIP and other technologies in the communications industry for 2007.

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Johanne Torres is contributing editor for TMCnet and Internet Telephony magazine. To see more articles by Johanne Torres, please visit her columnist page.