Redbox’s next product may be piracy lawsuits

There is a new turn in the long and winding saga of the disappearance of Redbox: assets originally belonging to the company parent, Chicken Soul Entertainment, may have finally found a buyer. But do not expect a resurrection of the redbox red kiosks or to the storming service of crackling of the chicken soup, anytime soon.

According to a judicial file on Wednesday, a company called Grove Street Partners offered $ 100 million for the so-called “IP litigation active ingredients” belonging to Chicken Soul for the Soul Entertainment and its subsidiaries. Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment held the rights to hundreds of films, mainly through his films in filial media. “IP disputes are made up of the rights of the areas to pursue disputes for copyright violation against various third parties linked, among other things, the violations of the copyright law of the digital millennium (” DMCA “) for media titles held or controlled by the domains,” said the file. The exact content of these assets has not been disclosed.

Grove Street Partners is actually the old name of Grove Street Funding, told me the CEO of the company Tom Murphy. The financing of rue Grove helps intellectual property holders Financing and managing the proceedings against copyright violations, with a particular emphasis on disputes related to DMCA. In large features, the company is not only done after individuals share online films, but actually use DMCA’s opinions as ammunition to then continue the ISPs who would not have done enough to prevent their customers from engaging in counterfeit.

Murphy described this tactic in a pitch deck in 2021 for American Films, a company that adopted a similar approach to hacking prosecution: “Internet service providers (ISP) are now exposed to the payment of responsibility created by the film Pirates via their illegal Bittorrent File film.

Grove Street has to pay $ 100 million for the transaction in five annual payments, according to the legal file. “We have aligned the financing of disputes to help us manage legal costs, digital evidence showing hacking events, DMCA opinions and annual payments due to the trustee,” Murphy told me without explaining more how the company finances this.

There have been an increasing number of prosecution against ISPs, rights holders alleging that these companies are not doing enough to disconnect the actors from licensees. An example of this is the trial of the music industry against Cox, which led to a verdict of a billion dollars against the FAI in 2019. This verdict was canceled last year by a court of appeal, the two parties now dealing with the Supreme Court.

All these prosecutions against the ISP do not end up being lucrative for rights holders. Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment Screen Media Ventures in fact continued a number of ISPs with similar claims. Some of these cases still drag for years after being deposited. At least a legal action, filed against the subsidiary of Astound Broadband, great communications, was withdrawn without ceremony in 2023, the General Council of Astound, Jeff Kramp, was boastful when the company “did not pay a penny to resolve this case”.

Meanwhile, the Redbox and Chicken soup for the bankruptcy of Soul Entertainment takes place, as is the prosecution against the business leaders by former employees and the trustee administering the case of bankruptcy. These prosecutions have raised serious accusations of mismanagement of companies against the chicken soup for the former leaders of Soul Entertainment, which these leaders have denied.