Toshiba sues Imation and others over DVD patents
- — 18 May, 2009 04:30
Toshiba filed suit Thursday in a U.S. court against Imation and several manufacturers and distributors of recordable DVD media for the alleged infringement of its patents.
Toshiba licenses patents essential for meeting DVD format specifications, the company said on Thursday.
Imation and the other defendant companies named in the complaint do not have license agreements covering recordable DVD media with Toshiba or the DVD6C Licensing Group (DVD6C), and have engaged in the import and sale of recordable DVD media in the U.S. without permission, Toshiba said.
DVD6C was set up by nine developers of DVD technology and formats, to license jointly their DVD patents.
Eight companies, including companies in Taiwan and India, have been named as defendants in the suit before the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin.
Toshiba's complaint seeks damages for past infringement, and requests that the court prohibit the sale, manufacture and import into the U.S. of recordable DVD media by the defendant companies.
The infringing recordable DVD media is sold in the U.S. under the Imation and Memorex brand names, Toshiba said.
Comments
THD
1
Ha Ha
Ironic... the medium used by 'pirates' to illegally copy movies has been illegally 'pirated' by a large company. :)
Who wants to bet Imation also keeps the extra 'tax' we pay for copying?
Fyreous
2
*shakes head*
Wow, you can pretty much sue over anything these days.... this all sounds like a bunch of corporate execs being stupid if you ask me...
Anonymous
3
This is the reason I still cannot afford blank dual layer disks three years after being conned into buying a dual layer recorder. No wonder piracy is rampant. If you look at the business ethics of our large companies what choice do we have?
Anonymous
4
Trying to get back after HD-DVD lost?
Is Toshiba trying to recoup after the lost of HD-DVD last year?
Anonymous
5
7 years?
The suit doesn't surprise me so much as the timing. 7 years after the DVD6C announced royalty costs for media? It's not like these guys [Memorex, Imation] just popped out from the ether. I mean honestly, I think the only RW discs I've ever bought have been Memorex. How did it take this long to notice?