Japan Court OKs Cheap Classic DVDs

A Japanese court rejected a request by Paramount Pictures to halt sales of bargain-priced DVD releases of movie classics such as "Roman Holiday," Kyodo News reported Tuesday.

The Tokyo District Court ruled that the copyrights to the movies in question had already expired and the company releasing them again in DVD format, First Trading Corp., was not required to stop its sales, the report said.

Court officials refused to confirm the report, saying it was a nonpublic case.

Paramount Pictures Corp. filed the injunction request with the court in May against one of several Japanese companies producing and marketing them at a bargain price, according to news reports.

Many versions of such DVD movie classics are priced as low as 500 yen ($4.40) in Japan, an eighth of the cost of Paramount's price of 4,179 yen ($36.70).

First Trading offers more than 200 titles for 500 yen, including classics like "Citizen Kane" and "Casablanca," according to the Tokyo-based company's Web site.

Paramount originally released the titles before 1953, and their 50-year patents expired, putting them into the public domain. A 2004 law extended copyright protection for films by 20 years.

Judge Makiko Takabe rejected Paramount's claims that its products that had entered the public domain are retroactively subject to patent protection for 20 more years under the new law, Kyodo said.