Reuters | Movie Studios Sue Makers of DVD Copying Software

Hollywood's major movie studios on Thursday turned up the legal heat on makers of DVD copying software, squaring off against one company in a California court and suing five others in New York.

In the latest development, lawyers for Paramount Pictures Corp. and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. filed for an injunction in U.S. District Court in New York to bar five companies from selling DVD copying software.The suit names Internet Enterprises Inc., RDestiny LLC, HowtocopyDVDs.com, DVDBackupbuddy.com and DVDSqueeze.com as defendants.

In federal court in San Francisco, lawyers for other film companies argued that the DVD X Copy and DVD Copy Plus software made by St. Louis-based 321 Studios could not be judged to be legal because it violates copyright law. The company has sold some 500,000 versions of its software.

The studios involved in the 321 suit are various divisions of Sony Corp., AOL Time Warner Inc., Walt Disney Co., Vivendi Universal, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., Pixar Animation Studios Inc. and Saul Zaentz Co.

Both suits center on the same basic issue of whether selling DVD copying software is illegal under 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act as the studios claim, or whether it is legal under "fair use" provisions of U.S. copyright law as the companies believe. Link to pleadings.