Electronics giant Toshiba has announced a new lawsuit against Imation over several DVD patents. Toshiba is claiming that the company has been manufacturing and distributing recordable media without first establishing licensing agreements for DVD format specifications set forward by the DVD Forum.
“The infringement of Toshiba’s patents by these companies, has negatively affected Toshiba’s business, and also caused damage to the legitimate and licensed DVD product manufacturing and distribution business as a whole,” the suit says.
Toshiba is seeking an injunction on the production, sales, and imports of the Imation discs, as well as monetary damages. The company will accept Imation establishing licensing agreements as an alternative resolution however.
Result for: dvd forum
Although the format has been technically dead for over a month, HD DVD is now officially dead, as the HD DVD Promotion Group has formally dissolved itself, marking a quiet end to the High Definition format.
After Toshiba’s decision last month to abandon the format, other big players involved have all pulled out as well, including Microsoft, Universal Studios, Paramount Studios and more recently, Best Buy.
The Promotion group, the organization in charge of persuading the world to adopt HD DVD, has now voted to disband, leaving HD DVD and its branding to the DVD Forum.
The question still remains however if the world will go Blu or move to flash memory and HD downloads as internet speeds get faster and flash capacities get larger.
