Starz Ent. LLC today filed a copyright infringement and breach of contract lawsuit against Buena Vista Television (BVT), a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Co. Filed in the U.S District Court for the Central District of California, the claim alleges that BVT violated an exclusive licensing deal by selling films for Internet distribution.
According to Starz, Disney is prohibited from selling its films for transmission over the Internet under the terms of the 1993 and 1999 Starz-BVT agreements, which were extended by BVT in 2005. Disney is accused of going behind the company’s back by selling movies online through such services as Apple’s iTunes and Walmart.com. “Such conduct,’ the suit states, ‘constitutes a blatant breach of the licensing agreements between BVT and Starz.’
Papers filed indicate that Starz, over the life of the contract, has paid more than $1 billion dollars for periods of exclusive rights to the films in question. The company also says it has has invested millions of dollars to develop, launch and market its own Internet video service, Vongo, which delivers more than a thousand movies, including Disney releases, per month to subscribers via broadband Internet connections.
“We want to encourage consumers to have every opportunity to access a wide array of films over the Internet,” comments Robert B. Clasen, chairman and CEO of Starz Ent. “But we cannot allow Disney to sell those rights to us on an exclusive basis and then sell the same rights to other parties.”
Clasen adds, “Disney has been a great partner. We hope to continue our relationship. But our agreements clearly prohibit them from selling their movies by electronic download over the Internet while they are exclusive to Starz. If Disney is permitted to violate our contract in this manner, it will undermine the integrity of copyright in general which is a cornerstone of our industry.”
Starz Ent. lays claim to being the exclusive subscription television and broadband provider of first-run films from leading Hollywood studios including Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar, Sony Pictures Ent., Overture Films, Revolution Studios, Miramax Films, Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, TriStar, Screen Gems, Sony Classics and Warren Miller Films. Select first-run theatrical films from The Weinstein Co., IFC and Yari Film Group are also available for subscription television and broadband exclusively on Starz Ent. services.
In addition to being premium movie service provider, Starz Ent. has become a producer of animated movies with last year’s purchase of IDT, which brought with it a number of animation houses including Film Roman in the U.S and Mainframe in Canada. The company’s latest toon release, Hellboy: Blood and Iron, debuted on Cartoon Network on Saturday, March 17, and will be available on DVD on June 12. The movie was animated by film Roman and Japanese studio Madhouse.
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