–Loses Appeal in VOD Patent Suit against Movielink
USA Video Technology (note: the company is a subsidiary of digital watermarking technology provider, USA Video Interactive) has filed a suit in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, alleging that the VOD services of a group of tier-one cable MSO’s and subsidiaries–Time Warner, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Comcast Cable Communications, Comcast of Richardson, Comcast of Plano, and Comcast of Dallas–are infringing on its US Patent No. 5,130,792. It says that it is seeking "fair compensation and a court injunction against further infringement."
The patent, which is entitled "Store and Forward Video System," describes "a system and method for a user to request, and have delivered over an electronic network, a digitized video program." (Note: unlike Acacia Media Technologies, which has met with some success in convincing VOD companies to license a series of VOD-related patents that it owns, USA Video actually developed the technologies described in its patent itself: it says that the technologies were developed and tested in partnership with Rochester Telephone Corp. It filed for the patent in 1990, was awarded it in 1992, and has since then succeeded in getting it approved in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada, and Japan.)
USA Video previously filed a similar patent-infringement suit against Hollywood studio-backed Web-based VOD service, Movielink. In January, 2005, the US District Court for the District of Delaware ruled that Movielink’s service is not willfully infringing upon USA Video’s patent. USA Video subsequently filed an appeal with the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington DC. However, earlier this week the appeals court upheld the lower court’s ruling in that case.
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