Wednesday, March 3, 2010

RealNetworks Drops RealDVD, Pays $4.5M In Lawsuit

Seattle-based RealNetworks said Wednesday afternoon that it is dropping its RealDVD technology, the firm's DVD ripping service which would have helped consumers copy DVDs to their hard drive, and paid $4.5M in costs and fees related to litigation. The firm had been sued by six major Hollywood movie studios, Viacom, and the DVD Copy Control Association over the software, which had been launched in September of 2008. RealNetworks was immediately sued after the launch over violation of the DMCA and for violation of RealNetworks license to the CSS algorithm used in decoding DVDs. RealNetworks said that as part of the settlement with the studios, it will withdraw its appeal of a preliminary injuction, and agreed to a permanent injunction barring the firm from distributing or supporting RealDVD or any other technology that enables the duplication of copyrighted content protected by the Content Scramble System, ARccOS, or RipGuard. RealNetworks also said it will refund the purchase price of the product to approximately 2,700 existing RealDVD customers.