After last week's news of eBay suing Craigslist, a company in whose ownership it has an important stake, eBay has decided to let the world know why exactly they're suing, and published a copy of its complaint.
This is eBay's version of the story, so it's obviously a bit biased towards them, but even now it's apparent that Craigslist has had good reasons for what they've done.
In a nutshell, eBay really wants to buy Craigslist, and it bought a significant stake in the company - 28.4% back in 2004. The two companies have made an agreement which states that, should they start competing with each other, each company has the right to resell shares without a ROFR. This is where it gets interesting, because eBay did launch a competitor; an international classifieds site Kijiji. And although eBay had tried to prove that Kijiji is a completely separate affair from Craigslist, the folks at Craigslist exercised a number of measures to reduce eBay's stake in the company; most importantly, they've diluted their shares with a poison pill and pushed eBay below the 25% (24,85%, to be exact) threshold of ownership, which means that eBay cannot put a new member into Craigslist's board of directors.