After years of chasing down people who’ve illegally downloaded their films, Warner Brothers is being sued for software piracy. Medien Patent Verwaltung, a company based out of Germany, claims they created the method of marking film reels that Warner Bros. uses to discern which theater had played a pirated film originally.

“We disclosed our anti-piracy technology to Warner Bros. in 2003 at their request, under strict confidentiality, expecting to be treated fairly,” MPV says in a statement. “Instead, they started using our technology extensively without our permission and without any accounting to us. However, we had taken care to obtain patents to protect MPV’s technology, and we are now in a position where we must assert our rights.”

In Warner Bros. defense, they are all the way in Germany. Hell, most small businesses I know of pirate the hell out of Microsoft Word and Microsoft is right here. I know this will get settled out of court, but I at least it gets some main stream press too.

(via TowerGaming)