The owners of an Aspen movie theater now hold the rights to Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman's catalog after an eight-year legal dispute with a Scandinavian media group that raised tricky questions about international business deals.

Isis Theater just completed registering the rights to all of Bergman's works with the U.S. Copyright Office following a Colorado court ruling late last year in its favor. The move could result in wider distribution of the late director's films, including art house classics The Seventh Seal, Persona and Scenes from a Marriage, which have been in limbo during the litigation.

The dispute between Isis and Svensk Filmindustri began in 1997, when Isis agreed to develop a historic Aspen theater into a multiplex cinema. Svensk, the leading distributor of films in Scandinavia, guaranteed the lease but refused to pay when partner Resort Theaters of America went bankrupt in 2000. Isis then sued and won an $8.9 million judgment from Svensk, which the Swedish company refused to pay because there is no treaty enforcing legal judgments between the two countries.

A Colorado judge last year ordered Svenski to transfer the rights to the Bergman film catalog to satisfy the judgment. The 200 titles affected by the order include Bergman classics Wild Strawberries and Fanny and Alexander as well as other Swedish films, including Lasse Hallstrom's My Life as a Dog and Ake Ohberg's Elvira Madigan.

Isis is considering ways to maximize the value of the film catalog, including selling the rights, expanding distribution or pursuing marketing collaborations with other established catalogs. When Bergman died in 2007, there were only limited retrospective showings of his films in theaters and on television because of the Colorado court case.

"Isis's right to garnish Svensk's rights fees in America to satisfy the judgment undoubtedly has had a chilling effect on distribution," said Jack Smith, an attorney with Holland and Hart in Denver who represents Isis. "We believe that these films, including the outstanding Bergman collection, will be of great interest to both distributors and the general film audience."

Svensk shuttered its only U.S. office in 2006, and last year withdrew its counsel from the case and stopped defending itself, Smith said.

"They've taken the position that they're in Sweden, and (Isis) is here, and none of this matters to them," he said. "This is obviously a very frustrating situation when a company, because it sits outside of our boundaries and yet does business here, takes the position that it's beyond our laws."