According to Verance, Digimarc’s infringement occurred through “Digimarc's participation in the submission of a digital watermarking technology for consideration as an industry standard for copy protection of audiovisual works”.
Verance has also notified the standards body reviewing the submissions that it will not license its patents to Digimarc or any affiliated company for use in this standard, pending the resolution of the ongoing litigation between the two companies.
"Verance generally prefers to resolve patent licensing issues through direct business negotiations," said Bob Cerasoli, president and CEO of Verance. “However, we cannot permit this blatant misappropriation of our intellectual property and will not license any party to use Digimarc's proposed system so long as their litigation against us continues.”
In a statement yesterday, Digimarc’s CEO Bruce Davis responded:
"Verance seems to believe they can use a barrage of misinformation, unfounded assertions, and inflammatory rhetoric to divert attention from the pervasive infringement of our patents throughout their products and services. These new claims have no merit. We remain comfortable that the courts will affirm our views regarding the infringements by Verance and the matters raised in their counterclaims."
Digimarc is a member of the Video Watermarking group (VWM group), a partnership that includes several consumer electronics companies. On 2nd November 2001, according to Verance, the VWM group formally submitted their digital watermarking technology to the DVD Copy Control Association, which is seeking to establish a copy protection standard for use with the DVD-Video format.
Digimarc has filed three patent infringement suits against Verance related to its digital watermarking technology. Verance denies it has infringed the patents' claims and has charged Digimarc with violation of federal and state antitrust laws, unfair competition laws, fraud, and breach of contract.