InterTrust Technologies Corp., a Santa Clara, California-based developer of distributed digital rights management technology, Thursday announced that it has filed a patent infringement complaint against Microsoft Corp. in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
In the complaint, InterTrust alleges that Microsoft’s Windows Media Player and other products implement a variety of rights management functions that infringe on a patent issued to InterTrust in February this year, the company said in a statement. InterTrust is seeking an injunction and monetary damages from Microsoft, it said.
The patent in question relates to systems and system components used for receiving encrypted content, securely managing content use, and transmitting rights-managed content and related rules to other users, InterTrust said.
“Microsoft has innovated heavily in the area of digital rights management for many years and it is unfortunate that InterTrust has chosen to resort to the courts rather than competing in the marketplace,” said Jim Cullinan, a Microsoft spokesman, via e-mail.
“We can’t comment on the specifics of the suit since we just received it,” he said.
InterTrust Technologies Corp., based in Santa Clara, Calif., can be reached at http://www.intertrust.com/. Microsoft, in Redmond, Wash., can be reached at http://www.microsoft.com.