The founders of Skype have agreed to join the investor group buying the Internet calling service from eBay Inc., and an announcement may come today, according to people familiar with the matter.

Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who sold Skype to eBay in 2005, will take a stake in the company alongside a group led by private-equity firm Silver Lake, said the people, who declined to be identified because the matter isn’t public. They also will drop lawsuits filed against Skype and the investor group in London, California and Delaware, the people said.

The settlement ends a legal fight that spanned two continents and threatened to shut down Skype. The founders, who own the underlying software code to the Web-calling service, had accused eBay of breaking a licensing deal and sued the investor group in September, claiming damages were growing by $75 million a day.

Index Ventures, which helped orchestrate the deal, will no longer be part of the investor group, the people said.