Macrovision Corp

Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc. said more than 90% of its shareholders approved its takeover by Macrovision Corp. The result was expected since News Corp., which owns 41% of Hollywood-based Gemstar shares, had agreed to approve the buyout. The deal is expected to close Friday.

TV Guide has laid off its top editor and other senior staff members just before the sale of the magazine's parent company is completed. Editor in chief Ian Birch was among those fired after shareholders of Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc. approved the sale to Macrovision Corp.

Investor Allen Shapiro and a private equity arm of JPMorgan Chase & Co. on Thursday scooped up the TV Guide cable channel and the TV Guide website for a bargain-basement price of $255 million. The sale of the channel, for about $3 per cable subscriber, sets "a new record low for a network of this size," said Derek Baine, a cable analyst with SNL Kagan. "It's surprising that it went for so little," Baine said. "But there is a lot of fear out there right now. People don't know how long the recession will last, or how bad the advertising market will get."

Silicon Valley software company Macrovision Corp. said Friday that it would buy Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc. for $2.8 billion in cash and stock in a bet that consumers will turn to their TV sets, not their personal computers, to manage home entertainment. The sale to Macrovision, which developed technology to prevent movie and video game copying, was a surprise because experts had expected such bigger names as Comcast Corp.

Sonic Solutions, a maker of CD and DVD copying programs, and encryption software maker Macrovision Corp. said Monday that they would provide retailers with technology to download films and sell them on DVDs on demand, freeing up warehouses and shelf space. Macrovision and Sonic are the first to offer software that uses digital downloads of films from Hollywood studios to create copyright-protected DVDs with artwork and bonus features.

Macrovision Corp., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based maker of software to prevent copying of digital music and DVDs, sued Altiris Inc., claiming infringement of two patents covering a system for managing product licenses. In a complaint filed Tuesday in federal court in San Jose, Macrovision asked for a court order blocking Altiris from using its patented technology without permission. Macrovision is also seeking monetary damages.

It took a Norwegian teenager and two Internet chat-room cohorts about a month to write a program that picked the digital locks on DVD movies and enabled them to be copied quickly and easily. It took more than five years for someone to find a way to snap the locks shut again. Macrovision Corp. today plans to unveil technology that it claims can block 97% of the DVD-copying software that pirates use without interfering with a DVD's playability or picture quality. The Santa Clara, Calif.

Macrovision Corp. has sued two companies it claims offer products that break its patented copyright protection technology and allow consumers to make unauthorized duplicates of commercial DVDs. In the suit filed Tuesday in New York, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Macrovision said the companies -- Sima Products Corp. and Interburn Enterprises Inc. -- infringed its patented copy control technology and violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Sima, which is based in Oakmont, Pa.

A California company that specializes in encryption technology has obtained the latest court order barring a Missouri company's sale of popular DVD-copying software. Macrovision Corp. of Santa Clara received the preliminary injunction in its patent-infringement lawsuit against 321 Studios Inc., already ordered by federal judges in recent months not to sell its DVD-cloning software. The injunction by U.S. District Judge Richard Owen in New York was made public Thursday. From Associated Press

Macrovision Corp. of Santa Clara, Calif., announced plans to incorporate software from Microsoft Corp. into its anti-piracy technology for music CDs. Macrovision's technology is designed to prevent songs from being "ripped" onto a computer and copied freely through Internet file-sharing services and the like. The Microsoft software adds scrambled song files that can be played on a computer and moved to selected portable devices but not duplicated further.