The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California, claims that the three entertainment giants control 56% of the motion picture market and 63% of the music market. It alleges that they conspired to break contracts and to demand higher licensing fees from Intertainer so that they “have the opportunity to deploy “ their rival Movielink service for movies on-demand “that would monopolise” the market.
According to the Associated Press, Sony is one of Intertainer's investors. The lawsuit claims that Sony, which also developed the technology behind Movielink, "induced former employees of Intertainer to violate their confidential knowledge of [Intertainer's] proprietary technology" to build Movielink.
Intertainer, a joint venture of five studios to distribute films over the internet to consumers with broadband connections, is required to pay licensing fees to major studios in order to offer their movies to subscribers.
Movielink has already been subject to a routine antitrust investigation by the US Department of Justice.