A little-known company called PlayMedia Systems filed suit on Monday against Nullsoft -- maker of the Winamp player software -- accusing the company of ripping off its code for decoding MPEG files. Nullsoft says the suit has no merit.
The lawsuit, filed in US District Court in Los Angeles, accuses Nullsoft and the company's president, Justin Frankel, of copyright infringement, fraud, and breach of contract. It seeks a permanent injunction against the company, plus about US$20 million in damages.
"We regret that we had no choice but to file this action," said PlayMedia chief executive Brian D. Litman in a statement. "Copyright law requires us to be vigilant in protecting our intellectual property, and efforts to remedy the situation directly with Nullsoft were to no avail."
In a prepared statement, the company vowed to fight back. "Nullsoft believes the entire complaint is without merit and will vigorously defend itself and Justin Frankel. Further, Nullsoft intends to pursue claims against PlayMedia Systems as the result of false statements made by its representatives."
Nullsoft, located in Sedona, Arizona, is best known for making Winamp, a shareware program that's considered the standard among MP3 players. MP3 is an audio format that compresses files for easy sending over the Net.
Last month, Nullsoft said 10 million consumers have downloaded the Winamp player, and 120,000 users were being added every day.
PlayMedia Systems is a Los Angeles company that develops and licenses audio and video technology, and owns the "AMP Audio MPEG Player" software engine that decodes MPEG files. The company insists Nullsoft's player uses its AMP code. According to the suit, Frankel licensed the AMP code from Tomislav Uzelac, now the director of media systems at PlayMedia Systems. The suit claims that Uzelac granted a nonexclusive license to Frankel, in exchange for a royalty fee in September 1997.
In March 1998, Advanced Multimedia Products, the business that owned the rights to the decompression code, which were transferred to PlayMedia, told Frankel the license was up. PlayMedia's lawsuit claims Frankel said a month later that Winamp no longer contained any of the proprietary code. But PlayMedia maintains that Winamp continues to use the code, and it wants an injunction to keep Nullsoft from using it.
"While it is true that Winamp initially licensed code for the decoding of MPEG audio files from Tomislav Uzelac, this code was replaced with proprietary code developed by Nullsoft as of June 1998. In general, the 'facts' as contained within the complaint are highly inaccurate," Nullsoft said in its statement.
"It's a meritless lawsuit," said Rex Manz, director of business strategies at Nullsoft.
"MP3 has become so formidable, there's an infringement [suit]," between two industry players, said Larry Iser, a music and intellectual property attorney at Greenberg and Glusker in Los Angeles. Iser said if PlayMedia can prove that Winamp contains its code, there is copyright infringement.
PlayMedia made sure to clarify that the suit is not about the controversial MP3 format. "This suit has nothing to do with MP3's intrinsic legitimacy as a format for the playback and enjoyment of music," said Litman. "Quite to the contrary, we believe that MP3 will empower artists and the owners of copyrighted music."
