James Delahunty
20 Apr 2005 18:59
It appears that Macrovision's challenge to InterTrust’s patents is likely to fail as the United States Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences gave a ruling last week that concluded that key InterTrust patents have priority over Macrovision's claims. When Macrovision bought patents from a European company some years ago they realised that many of the filing dates had date precedence over InterTrust’s core trust chain patents in Digital Rights Management and filed an Interference suit.
If one patent is found to be very similar to another owned by a different company, then an Interference suit can be filed and courts have to decide which company can own the patents. In the United States, the laws recognize whichever company first invented a technology but in other places it all goes down to the date when a patent application was filed. However Macrovision still believes that it owns key DRM patents in many countries outside the United States.
"This is an ongoing process with other portions of the interference action still under review by the Panel. The InterTrust interference action has no bearing on patents outside the US and our essential international DRM patent applications are proceeding to issuance in Europe and Japan, unaffected by the outcome of the US patent interference action." the company said. Macrovision CEO Bill Krepick says the company will consider its appeal options. "Macrovision intend to introduce a licensing program based upon our international DRM patents as well as on those portions of the US patents subsequently issued." he added.
Source:
The Register