| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | Mountain View, California (February, 2001) |
| Headquarters | Sunnyvale, California and Waterloo, Ontario |
| Key people | Michael Malcolm, CEO Cheena Srinivasan, COO |
| Employees |
140 [1] |
| Website | kaleidescape.com |
Kaleidescape, Inc. is a Sunnyvale, California-based private company, founded in 2001, which designs multi-room home entertainment server systems that store and stream video and audio content (such as movies, television shows, and music) to "player" appliances connected to televisions.[2] The company began marketing its products in 2003.[3] Research and development is carried out partly by Kaleidescape Canada, Inc. based in Waterloo, Ontario.
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Kaleidescape was founded in 2001 by Michael Malcolm, Dan Collens, and Cheena Srinivasan. Malcolm had previously founded Network Appliance and CacheFlow.[3] Malcolm self-funded the startup, and the company spent over two years developing its technology in "stealth mode". Kaleidescape is reported to be "solidly" profitable and was funded without venture capital money, although it does not disclose its finances as a private company.[4]
In 2004, the DVD Copy Control Association, the licensor of CSS (content scramble system), the technology for the copy control of DVDs, sued Kaleidescape for breach of contract. The DVD CCA alleged that its CSS License did not permit Kaleidescape's movie servers to serve DVDs from copies on hard disk. They sued to stop the company from selling these movie servers. Kaleidescape Systems allow users to rip, store, and stream video from DVDs.[5] The case, although only for breach of contract and not a copyright case, was considered by some to be an important recent test of fair use precedent,[6] given advancements in technology and the digital media rights field[7]. In 2007, Kaleidescape won the case. In fact, the DVD CCA had alleged that Kaleidescape had breached terms in a document called the General Specifications. The court ruled that the General Specifications are not even part of the contract. [8]. On August 13, 2009, a California appellate court reversed the lower court's decision that the General Specifications is not part of the CSS License, and sent the case back to the lower court for further proceedings (see DVD Copy Control Association, Inc. v. Kaleidescape, Inc.). Contrary to news reports, the appellate court did not find that Kaleidescape violated the contract. [9]. [10].