RealNetworks has announced that they have settled their outstanding lawsuits with the major Hollywood studios over their Real DVD ripping software, effectively killing the product off after making just 2700 sales.
Additionally, Real will pay $4.5 million to pay off the legal costs of the litigation.
“We are pleased to put this litigation behind us,” adds Bob Kimball, president and acting CEO for Real. “This is another step toward fulfilling our commitment to simplify our company and focus on our core businesses. Until this dispute, Real had always enjoyed a productive working relationship with Hollywood. With this litigation resolved, I hope that in the future we can find mutually beneficial ways to use Real technology to bring Hollywood’s great work to consumers.”
The settlement also terms a permanent injunction that will block RealDVD and similar technologies forever from sale in the US or abroad.
The $30 USD software application allowed users to make a copy of their DVDs and it play it back on their PCs, allowing for, what Real thought, were legal backups. Clearly, Hollywood did not agree, despite the fact that Real’s backups also included DRM to stop sharing of the backups.
Result for: core businesses
Netflix has announced plans to discontinue sales of used DVDs in an effort to shift focus back to its core businesses of streaming movies and TV and DVD rentals.
Posted in the official Netflix blog, the company said they will stop sales of used DVDs on November 30th.
The blog states: “As you know, our core business is delivering great movie rentals to you on DVD by mail and instantly to the computer and TV, so we’ve decided it makes sense for us to focus exclusively on that. This means we will stop selling previously viewed DVDs through the Web site. We’re sorry for any inconvenience for those of you who regularly purchase DVDs at Netflix, but we’re excited about being able to spend the extra time focusing on continually improving our core rental business for you.”
The announcement comes on the heels of Netflix’s announcement that their new Silverlight-based movie streaming player had gone to public beta and would be accessible to Mac users.
Many subscribers who posted on the blog however seemed to be against the move.
“Being able to purchase previously viewed movies from Netflix was a huge bonus of my membership. I am truly sorry to lose that benefit. I hate to lose features to my membership, and I hope this is not a trend,” wrote one subscriber.
Result for: core businesses
The Lenovo Group has announced the completion of the sale of its mobile phone handset division to a group of investors. The sale, which was originally announced last week, was finally completed today and marks the end of Lenovo’s try in the mobile phone business.
The company, which specializes in desktop and notebook PCs, decided their mobile phone business was a failure and was distracting from the company’s core businesses. The deal has been valued at $100 million USD and was approved by shareholders on March 17.
Lenovo’s phones were sold mainly in Asia and accounted for $108 million USD in revenue during the quarter ended on Dec. 31, 2007. That small figure only accounted for 2.4 percent of the company’s total sales during that Period and the total shipments declined by over 30 percent year over year.
