CULVER CITY, CA — It has been close to five years since Jonathon Taplin’s company, Intertain, last made a sale through its online video-on-demand service, but Intertain’s impact on the Web may live far past the closure of its flagship VOD product.Last week, Intertainer filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Texas, alleging that major Internet media providers Apple, Google and Napster are all infringing on a patent obtained by Intertainer in 2005 – United States Patent No. 6,925,469 – that involves commercial distribution of audio and video content over the Internet.

Founded in 1996, Intertainer received financial backing from a number of huge corporate players, including Intel, Comcast, US West, Sony Corp. (of America), and NBC. The company also struck licensing deals with major content providers, like Columbia/TriStar and Warner Brothers.

Although the future looked bright for Intertainer, by 2002 the company was struggling to compete with a variety of lower-cost competitors in the online VOD sector and was forced to close its VOD service.

In September 2002, the company filed an anti-trust suit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, naming AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal, Sony, and Sony’s video service Movielink, and accusing them of “conspiracy to fix prices in the digital distribution of entertainment and restraint of trade,” according to information published on Intertainer’s website.

A subsequent anti-trust investigation conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice into the Movielink service was dropped in 2004, according to the New York Times. Last March, Intertain’s lawsuit against AOL/Time Warner, Vivendi and Sony was settled for an undisclosed sum.

Now, Taplin and Intertainer are looking for more satisfaction through the courts, alleging that Google, Napster, and Apple have been engaged in “willful and deliberate” infringement of Patent No. 6,925,469 since that patent was granted to Intertainer in 2005.

According to the patent abstract for U.S. Patent No 6,925,469, the “invention is directed to an open business platform that provides an end-to-end solution for managing, distributing, and/or retailing digital media assets from various content suppliers.”

“In one or more embodiments, the present invention provides an integrated system that permits media content suppliers to deposit their media assets with the system where they are prepared by a content management system for distribution to consumers via a secure distribution system,” the abstract continues. “The media content suppliers may then track and-control the use of their media assets through a subscriber management system for managing consumer accounts, a licensing server for issuing licenses restricting the use of media content, and a royalty reporter for determining and reporting royalties to the various content suppliers.”

Theodore Stevenson, a partner with the law firm representing Intertainer in the lawsuit, told the New York Times that the company filed suit against Google, Apple, and Napster because those companies were perceived to be leaders in the digital download market. Stevens declined to specify the damages sought in the lawsuit.

Representatives for Apple and Napster declined comment, and Google representative Ricardo Reyes told the Los Angeles Times that the company had not yet been served with the lawsuit, to his knowledge.

Some legal observers say that Intertainer could face an uphill battle in the lawsuit because of the filing date of the patent, which Intertainer originally applied for in 2001.

Eric Goldman, director of the High-Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law told the New York Times that there are “so many of these lawsuits nowadays, it is hard to figure out which ones are a serious threat and which ones are not.”

Goldman also noted that it was unclear from the patent’s language precisely what specific technology and/or service was covered under the particular Intertainer patent at issue.

“I have the same problem with this patent as so many of the patents of the dot-com boom days,” Goldman said. “I don’t know what it means.”

Stevenson, the attorney for Intertainer, told the New York Times that the patent covers a system used by content owners to upload content, and by end-users to download content, adding that the technology is “pretty basic to the architecture of digital content delivery nowadays.”

Ultimately, what Intertainer seeks in its lawsuit may not be a large financial settlement, but the acquisition of some key licensees; while Intertainer’s VOD business might be history, the company continues as a corporate entity – an entity that will now continue as a patent licensing business, according to Taplin’s interview with the New York Times.

It remains to be seen if the companies named in the patent litigation will flinch or fight, but should Apple, Google, and Napster settle by way of licensing Intertainer’s technology, the prospect of more licensing-by-threatened-litigation could reach other online content distributors, including adult content VOD services.