James Delahunty
14 Apr 2005 14:25
Major Hollywood studios have settled a lawsuit against ESS Technology, a chipmaker that they accused of allowing its products to be used illegally in DVD copying devices. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) claims that ESS violated a contract by selling DVD Decoding chips to manufacturers that had not acquired a license to the studio's anti-piracy technology. Last July, a California state judge blocked the sale of ESS chips to other unlicensed manufacturers.
"ESS totally supports the enforcement of all parties' valid intellectual property rights and is committed to being a leader in enabling content protection features," ESS CEO Robert Blair said in a statement. "We look forward to working with the motion picture industry in their worldwide enforcement efforts and in the development of next-generation anti-piracy technology." This lawsuit was part of an on-going Hollywood campaign against hardware manufacturers.
The studios claim to be targeting manufacturers of devices that assist with piracy. One controversial lawsuit in this campaign is against Kaleidescape. The company sells products that allow users to transfer as many as 500 DVD movies to a central server, and then browse and play the movies anywhere in a house. Kaleidescape executives say that they have acquired a license from the DVD Copy Control Association but DVD-CCA said its technology is meant to prevent copying of DVDs, and filed suit against Kaleidescape in December.
Source:
News.com