And removing trademarks would be an actionable offense.

Not that difficult. A forensic examination of the soundtrack would do it.

And removing trademarks would be an actionable offense.

Not only that, but if the only thing being removed is a logo, the publishers are still recognizable on sight. I mean, I just *sing* karaoke, and it's not hard for me to see, "Oh, that's yellow on blue, in that specific font? That's a Chartbuster track."

Two recent federal court rulings rejecting the protectability of alleged trade dress in product configurations should make plaintiffs think twice before pursuing such claims. In both cases, the plaintiffs lost at summary judgment and now face the prospect of paying defense counsel fees and the costs incurred in defending against the claims.
. . .

In its decision, the appellate court noted the plaintiff's "fundamental misunderstanding...that the presumption of functionality can be overcome on the basis that its product is visually distinguishable from competing products." As the court explained, uniqueness alone is "insufficient to warrant trade dress protection."

. . .

If nothing else, these decisions should remind plaintiffs that product configuration trade dress claims cannot serve as a "catch-all" where other intellectual property protections are unavailable. Caution must be exercised to be certain that the required elements of a claim are met in order to avoid what can be costly consequences.

I have been using CDGFix for years, and you can remove logos and such, but it would take a very long time to do 10,000 cdg files (months). If your time isn't worth anything then go for it.....if it is worth something it would be way cheaper to get "varified" I mean certified. NOW IF YOU ARE TRYING TO PULL SOME WOOL that is another story.

Sounds like CAVS is sick of being accused of trademark infringement, so they struck back. I am kind of interested to see what Harrington has to say about this. If you can take away the logos AND the sweeps, and redo them in your own style, this could be a game changer.

When has CAVS been accused of trademark infringement?

As others have noted, software of this type has been in the marketplace for years. There is nothing new about it as far as I can tell.

If you want to use software to remove the entire graphical display from copies of tracks that you purchased legitimately, all to avoid a $150 audit fee, I suppose you could do that. That seems like a lot of trouble, pretty much to the point of irrationality.

I'm sure you're not advocating that someone do this to tracks that they didn't purchase legitimately, right? Because that would be a copyright infringement, which we would almost certainly pursue...and the removal of the graphics in an attempt to avoid detection would be strong evidence of willful infringement.

So who hear ever said CAVs was illegal? I've heard people say it is slow, bulky, not liking them for whatever reason. I have heard and it was confirmed that any CAVS units that have SC on them are illegal as SC never gave permission for their product to be on them. I don't think I ever heard SC saying or accusing CAVs of putting their (SC) product on the units. But instead, a third party doing so.

Smooth, you're right, you bought the discs but not the permission to format shift, and there's the rub.

So who hear ever said CAVs was illegal?