Register Hardware

Original URL: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/07/05/tosh_sues_dvd_maker/

Toshiba sues DVD duplicator

By Tony Smith
Published Thursday 5th July 2007 11:31 GMT

Another day, another vendor fires off a lawsuit alleging another company has violated its DVD patents. Yesterday it was LG going for Quanta (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/07/04/lg_sues_quanta/); today, it emerged Toshiba is taking on German disc replication company EDD Bizz GmbH.

Toshiba yesterday filed a complaint against EDD with the Düsseldorf Regional Court claiming the German company was not entitled to make and sells DVD-branded products because it hadn't licensed the appropriate intellectual property from Toshiba or the DVD6C Licensing Agency, the body the manages DVD technology pooled by nine companies and enshrined in 14 patents covering everything from players and recorders to media, including pre-recorded, recordable and rewriteable discs, and even cases.

Toshiba said it asked the court to prevent EDD selling allegedly infringing products and to force the replication company to cough up unspecified damages in compensation. It also said it wants the court to force EDD to licence the technology it claims the company has thus far failed to do.

Toshiba has form here. It has separately taken legal action in the US against a number of Taiwanese DVD drive makers and American importers and wholesalers during the past five years, most recently filing complaints on 6 April 2007 against "17 manufacturers and importers of DVD-related products" from the US, China and Hong Kong, including Daewoo and jWIN.

Görlitz-based EDD has yet to respond to the suit.

LG yesterday said it had filed a lawsuit against Taiwanese contract manufacturer Quanta alleging infringement of DVD patents in laptops made for a number of unspecified major vendors.