Judge Denies Kaleidescape in DVD Movie Storage Case

26 Mar, 2012 By: Erik Gruenwedel

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A California judge has denied Kaleidescape’s request for stay of a permanent injunction disallowing it to sell a proprietary movie disc storage system.

Judge William Monahan of the Superior Court in Santa Clara County denied Kaleidescape’s appeal March 22, upholding a March 8 decision that Kaleidescape breached its contract with the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) by selling a product that makes a fully functional copy of protected DVD content on a server and allows it to be played back without the presence of the disc.

“Defendant’s ex-parte application for stay is denied in its entirety,” Monahan wrote in his decision. In effect, the judge underscored his March 8 decision in which he said there was no public policy advancement by allowing Kaleidescape “to continue in its breach of the License Agreement.”

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Kaleidescape filed the appeal March 9, the day after Monahan declared a permanent injunction on the company’s platform, launched in 2001, that allowed disc owners to make and store digital copies of their movies in a closed system for future playback.

Ironically, the litigation comes as major studios are rolling out cloud-based digital lockers (UltraViolet and Apple’s iCloud) in an effort to invigorate sellthrough of physical and digital movies.

Kaleidescape claims its system prevents DVDs from being copied to the Internet, writable DVDs, computers or mobile devices. Furthermore, users cannot download a pirated movie from the Internet to a Kaleidescape set-top box. Kaleidescape said its business platform is a boon to disc sellthrough as it enables the average household with about 110 discs the ability to store the content digitally. The average Kaleidescape user owns more than 500 movies on DVD and Blu-ray Disc.

The DVD Copy Control Association, which is backed by the major studios, disagreed and filed a lawsuit Dec. 7, 2004. That case ended 2007 with a favorable ruling for Kaleidescape. The DVD CCA appealed to the California Court of Appeal, which in 2009 sent the matter back to the California Superior Court for a second trial.

A Kaleidescape representative was not immediately available for comment.

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