SAN JOSE, CALIF. Company faces lawsuit for DVD-copy programs

The lawsuit targets products consumers use to copy movies on DVDs.
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- A film industry group that oversees copy protection technology of movie DVDs filed a patent infringement lawsuit Friday against 321 Studios Inc., the maker of popular DVD-copying programs.
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is the latest salvo by the DVD Copy Control Association in its larger fight against what the movie industry considers unauthorized usage of its content.
The move also reflects the organization's strategic shift to go after businesses instead of individuals. Last month, the group dropped its trade secret case against San Francisco programmer Andrew Bunner and hundreds of others who helped post on the Internet copies of a code that cracks the movie copy-protection technology known as the Content Scramble System.
"In taking this legal action, DVD CCA is turning its focus toward those who produce and broadly distribute products in the marketplace that facilitate the widespread infringement of the copyrights on motion pictures that CSS was designed to protect," said Steven Reiss, an attorney for the association.
Products at issue
The patent lawsuit centers on St. Louis-based 321's flagship products, DVD Copy and DVD X Copy, which have reaped strong sales from consumers and bitter criticism from Hollywood.
The DVD-copying programs let users make backups by defeating the copy protections encoded onto movie discs.
In two other pending lawsuits, the movie industry claims the software facilitates copyright infringement and piracy. The company also faces a patent lawsuit by encryption technology provider Macrovision Inc.
In all the cases, 321 denies any wrongdoing.
Now the Copy Control Association claims the product infringes its patents and uses the CSS technology without proper licenses.
Julia Bishop-Cross, a 321 spokeswoman, declined to comment.