321 Studios and the free software community

321 Studios and the free software community

Posted Feb 19, 2004 8:55 UTC (Thu) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698)
Parent article: 321 Studios and the free software community

321 Studios is also being sued by Macrovision, which is also claiming patent infringement along with DMCA violations. 321 has just filed a response pointing out that, among other things, Macrovision's patents cover an analog copy-protection mechanism which is not relevant to a digital copying program.

Without researching it further, but based on a past professional experience with how the Macrovision corporation does things as well as a personal experience, I can make an educated guess.

Macrovision licenses DVD players, satellite receivers, PVRs, etc. to incorporate circuitry that generates the copy protection signal only when the content indicates that the protection should be enabled. Generally they do not charge a per-unit fee for these hardware licenses. Macrovision sells the content providers licenses to set the protection bit in the content.

Macrovision asserts that setting the protection bit in the content without buying a license from them infringes their patents.

Personally, I'm somewhat skeptical that by simply writing a few bits in a different state on a DVD-R medium, that I've violated their patents. The DVD-R medium is not capable of generating the Macrovision signal, that is a function of the player. And the player is licensed for the patent. Therefore it seems to me that under the doctrine of first sale, the owner of the player has the right to play any media on it which may or may not cause it to output a Macrovision-encoded signal, without the need for the medium to also be licensed. But IANAL, and I have no idea how a court would view this.

Anyhow, in the matter at hand, I suspect that Macrovision probably is asserting that 321's software produces media with the Macrovision enable bit set, but without paying Macrovision for a patent license.

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