A 30-day cooling off period has been agreed in a bitter legal dispute between UK set-top box manufacturer Pace Micro Technology Plc and Macrovision Corp, the Sunnyvale, California company that supplies it with video security software. Macrovision threatened to cut off supplies to Pace because it is angry over the way its software was passed onto giant Brazilian group Gradiente Electronica SA, which licenses Pace’s technology and produces boxes locally which it sells under its own name. We want to ensure that other people don’t interfere with our intellectual property, a Macrovision official explained. The dispute has been rumbling on for the past 18 months but came to a head when Macrovision said it would no longer supply Pace, and the UK company took court action to stop the threat to its operations. Both sides are now taking a diplomatic approach. Negotiations between the parties are continuing and they are hopeful of an early resolution of the matter, according to a Pace statement.
