Last month, e-reader maker Spring Designs sued Barnes & Nobles over breach of contract and infringement, claiming that off-the-record meetings led B&N to create their Nook device based off ideas for SD’s Alex e-reader.
Today, a San Jose court dismissed SD’s request for a preliminary injunction, meaning the Nook is free to be sold as planned. The judge said the suit did not show clearly that the Nook was damaging sales of the Alex, and that there is a “genuine dispute” as to whether B&N stole any of SD’s ideas in the first place.
There is no date for the actual trial but pre-trial hearings are expected to be quick. It is notable that both devices have two screens (one black and white e-paper and one smaller color touchscreen) and both are based on the Android operating system.
Result for: preliminary injunction
A federal Judge has stung RealNetworks badly by issuing a preliminary injunction preventing the company from selling its RealDVD software, which costs $30 a pop. Additionally, the company’s prototype DVD player, Facet, will now also be blocked from sale. RealDVD allowed consumers to make copies of their DVDs onto their computers, while Facet is a HDD-equipped DVD player. The company has maintained that the software is entirely legal.
This case became important because it can answer the question of whether consumers in the U.S. are allowed to make copies of their DVD movies. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) regards Facet and RealDVD as tools of piracy that could cost the industry a lot of money, and claimed they were illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Real argued that because it has licensed Content Scrambling System (CSS) from the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA), that its software and prototype DVD player do not break provisions surrounding the circumvention of copy protection, disregarding ARccOS and RipGuard.
“RealDVD makes a permanent copy of copyrighted DVD content,” U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Patel wrote in her decision, “and by doing so breaches its License Agreement with the DVD Copy Control Association … and circumvents a technological measure that effectively controls access to or copying of the Studios’ copyrighted content on DVDs.” Real, of course, said it was very disappointed with the Judge’s decision. The MPAA on the other hand called it a victory for the creators and producers of movies and TV shows.
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Result for: preliminary injunction
A German court has given both Universal and Warner Bros a preliminary injunction against the streaming video portal Zattoo.
The site had been running commercial spots using films from Universal and Warner. Zattoo shows free German TV channels on its site as free web streams while adding advertising to the content.
The studios however are now suing the site saying “its agreement with German channels does not allow it to insert commercials into its films.”
Zattoo is now blocked from streaming any Warner and Universal films until a settlement is reached, and the site pays additional licensing fees.
The IPTV provider, which launched 4 years ago, has over 4 million registered users and is available in Germany, Denmark, France, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K.
