Advanced Television

MPAA files new complaint against RealNetworks

July 1, 2009

As both sides await a judge's ruling over the legality of RealNetworks’ DVD copying software RealDVD, the major studios have filed a new complaint, charging that RealNetworks lied in court about circumventing DVD copy protections.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) asked the Judge to include in the court record five patent filings by RealNetworks, published by the Patent and Trademark Office on June 11th. The MPAA claims that RealNetworks seeks to patent DVD copyright circumvention technologies for RealDVD that it denied existed in the April hearing.

"These patent applications flatly contradict the testimony and proposed findings submitted by Real and strongly support the studios' contentions regarding Real's circumvention of ARccOS and RipGuard," the studios claim in the filing. RealNetworks called the latest charges "false and misleading."

Whether RealDVD and planned DVD copying device Facet circumvent copy-protection technologies to copy DVDs is at the heart of the lawsuit between the studios and RealNetworks. The major studios claim that RealDVD and Facet violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by circumventing copy protection on DVDs.

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