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Hollywood Sues to Snuff Out Pirate TV

By William Vogeler, Esq. on February 21, 2019 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Just in time for the Oscars, Hollywood is trying to snuff out competition from streaming video.

If it were a movie, it would be a pirate story. The major studios claim one company is stealing their bounty online.

Omniverse One World Television provides streaming content to several online television services. Hollywood's plot: sue one to kill them all.

Movies and Television

In Paramount Pictures Corporation v. Omniverse One World Television, six studios claim that Omniverse is infringing on their copyrights. Paramount, Columbia, Disney, Universal, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros have been there before.

With help from Amazon and Netflix, they shut down streaming device Dragon Box. In the latest lawsuit, they allege Omniverse supplied the content to Dragon Box and continues to do it with other streaming services.

Omniverse streams the plaintiffs' copyrighted movies and television shows without permission to "an already large, and rapidly growing, number of end users," the complaint says.

According to the lawsuit, SkyStream TV, Flixon TV, and Silicon Dust's HDHomeRun Service are taking the plaintiffs' content. Flixon, for example, provides streams to Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End."

Money Channel

The plaintiffs allege streaming services are cheating them out of millions of dollars. In the Dragon Box case, the defendants were ordered to pay $14.5 million.

But Omniverse denies the allegations in the new complaint. In a press release, the company said it will "engage quickly and constructively" to resolve the studios' concerns.

"Omniverse believes there is no place in the industry for media pirates and, consistent with the plaintiffs, believes their legitimate business has been harmed by the unlicensed distribution of media content," the release said.

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