MP3.Com sued by PlayMedia

Internet digital music company MP3.Comhas been roped into a copyright infringement lawsuit by MP3 player developer PlayMedia Systems just days after it announced it was going to go public.

PlayMedia initially aimed its lawsuit solely at rival Nullsoft, developer of the WinAmp MP3 player. PlayMedia alleged that Nullsoft stole code from its own AMP MP3 player to develop the WinAmp player.

Nullsoft has already admitted it switched from using the Nitrane decoder which is supposed to be based on AMP to the ISO standard MP3 decoder licensed from the Fraunhofer Institute.

MP3.Com has been brought into the equation due to the fact that it supports WinAmp. MP3.com is a popular site for downloading the WinAmp player and PlayMedia believes this constitutes an allegation of aiding and abetting in the alleged copyright breach.

"I think we could credibly assert that MP3.Com has built a significant portion of its business by virtue of their massive distribution of WinAmp," said Brian Litman, PlayMedia's chief executive officer.

PlayMedia has already won an injunction against Nullsoft ordering it to stop distribution of versions of WinAmp that contain the alleged copyrighted code.

Now the company has the distributors of WinAmp in its sights, the first and most prominent of which is MP3.Com, which has only just announced plans to raise around $115m in a flotation.

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