Badge engineering does not make the contracts go away

"If they were merely selling phones they bought from the manufacturer, then copyright doesn't come into it and they don't need permission from the copyright holder."

Dodgy ground, needs careful consideration. Consider the following real life experience and then see if it relates to Skype's circumstances.

Telco X doesn't make its own DSL modem/routers but has someone else design and make them, and then Telco X puts its own name and its own badges on them. Telco X forgets to provide access to (note: access to, not necessarily a copy of) the relevant open source bits and bobs as required by GPL, even though a different vendor's near-identical router (with different badge and marginally different firmware) does provide access to them. Telco X's legal department are contacted by a customer who wants the licence obligations fulfilled. Telco X's legal dept say "it's a fair cop guv, we do try to take these things seriously but we missed out on this one, we'll fix it", and in due course the bits are available on request. Because the GPL requires them to be, and because Telco X are the responsible party (even though it's not their design or manufacture, it's their product).

On the other hand you might not expect Argos to get into big trouble for selling Telco X's DSL kit just because Telco X hadn't fulfilled their part of the GPL contract. Or would you?

Are Skype the designer, manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer, or what? Does it make any difference?

Discuss.