Context: Nokia has signed multimedia patent license agreements with various streamers, usually without litigation except in Amazon’s case, where a cross-jurisdictional dispute was settled earlier this year (March 31, 2025 ip fray article). Nokia never left a doubt about both its preference for licensing and its preparedness to litigate if need be (June 2025 LinkedIn post by Nokia IP Licensing VP Vipul Mehrotra).
What’s new: Yesterday Nokia filed video patent infringement lawsuits against world-famous media conglomerate Paramount in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware and the Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) State Court. There are 13 patents-in-suit in Delaware.
Direct impact: While U.S. litigation takes time, damages awards can be mind-boggling, and Paramount faces the problem that two of the U.S. patents-in-suit were already held infringed in a preliminary United States International Trade Commission (USITC or ITC) ruling against Amazon, which also deemed Nokia’s multimedia patent licensing terms fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND). In Brazil, an injunction may come down far sooner, and merits-based preliminary injunctions (PIs) are impactful at a relatively early point in time.
Wider ramifications:
- Video streamers are increasingly reminded, sometimes through litigation, of their obligation to license valid patents they use. For example, InterDigital is suing Disney in Europe and Brazil (May 30, 2025 ip fray article).
- Nokia felt forced to enforce multimedia patents Hisense, Acer and ASUS (June 26, 2025 ip fray article), though those are not video streamers, and Chinese automaker Geely over cellular standard-essential patents (SEPs) (July 22, 2025 ip fray article). Those are other categories of licensees with which Nokia usually strikes deals without having to resort to enforcement. It could be that Paramount and Geely thought Nokia had its hands full with Hisense, Acer and ASUS, but if that was their bet, then it didn’t pan out.
Note: Video streaming is a topic with respect to which we do not paywall our articles.
Nokia issued the following statement:
“Companies providing video streaming services enjoy huge benefits from the research and development conducted by Nokia. Without this innovation, streaming services would not work the way that consumers have come to expect. Nokia reinvests the compensation we receive for the use of our video technologies in developing next generation multimedia technologies. Our preference is to avoid litigation, but Paramount left us with no choice. We hope that Paramount accepts their obligation and pays for the use of our technologies in their streaming services.”
Nokia’s above-mentioned Mr. Mehrotra has shared that statement on LinkedIn, where he also added his personal perspective:
“[W]e really took our time thinking this through before filing. We’ve been at the forefront of video technology for more than 30 years, and we can’t let our foundational technologies be used without fair compensation. I hope we can conclude similar discussions with other video streaming companies that use our technologies without the need for legal action. As we have shown today, we are prepared to protect our intellectual property where necessary.”
So far, Nokia’s licensing record with respect to streaming is 4-1: four amicable agreements and one litigation settlement.
U.S. complaint and patents-in-suit
Here’s the U.S. complaint:
According to para. 41, “Nokia first informed Paramount of Nokia’s extensive portfolio of patents relevant to multimedia technologies in an email dated September 29, 2022, ” and has been negotiating with Paramount in good faith ever since. But the parties couldn’t reach an agreement, in no small part because of Paramount taking the position that Nokia’s encoding claims (as opposed to only the decoding claims) are subject to FRAND licensing commtiments to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the organization that developed the H.264 (Advanced Video Coding (AVC)) and H.265 (High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC)) standards.
In addition to seeking the usual non-injunctive remedies, Nokia also asks the U.S. court, in prayer for relief H, to set the record straight on that question (“adjudge and declare that Nokia’s encoding patent claims are not subject to a RAND obligation and that there has been no violation of the same”). That is a question an ITC judge resolved in Nokia’s favor.
RAND and FRAND are synonymous, but some U.S. standard development organizations use RAND while FRAND is more common in connection with cellular standards.
These are the U.S. patents-in-suit:
- U.S. Patent No. 7,532,808 (“method for coding motion in a video sequence”) claims an improved “skip” mode for video coding. An ITC judge’s initial determination in the Amazon dispute found the patent valid and infringed (January 30, 2025 ip fray article).
- U.S. Patent No. 6,950,469 (“Method for sub-pixel value interpolation”) claims improved sub-pixel interpolation for motion-compensated prediction in the field of video coding.
- U.S. Patent No. 8,175,148 (“Method and device for indicating quantizer parameters in a video coding system”) claims an improved scheme for quantization parameters in video coding.
- U.S. Patent No. 8,050,321 (“Grouping of image frames in video coding”) claims a novel approach to independent video sequences that provides enhanced random access among other things. An Administrative Law Judge of the ITC found the patent valid and infringed by Amazon (December 21, 2024 ip fray article).
- U.S. Patent No. 7,289,674 (“Spatial prediction based intra coding”) claims improved spatial prediction techniques for video coding.
- U.S. Patent No. 6,968,005 (“Video coding”) claims more error-resilient and efficient techniques for representing temporally independent and predicted pictures in video coding.
- U.S. Patent No. 7,082,450 (“Implementation of a transform and of a subsequent quantization”) claims improved transform and quantization techniques in video coding.
- U.S. Patent No. 6,711,211 (“Method for encoding and decoding video information, a motion compensated video encoder and a corresponding decoder”) claims improved prediction techniques for segmented macroblocks in video coding.
- U.S. Patent No. 8,005,145 (“Method and apparatus for transferring video frame in telecommunication system”) claims improved motion-compensated prediction techniques in video coding.
- U.S. Patent No. 9,800,891 (“Method and associated device for filtering digital video images”) claims an improved block-boundary filter for video coding.
- U.S. Patent No. 6,856,701 (“Method and system for context-based adaptive binary arithmetic coding”) claims improved context-based adaptive binary arithmetic coding for video coding.
- U.S. Patent No. 8,107,744 (“Picture buffering for prediction references and display”) claims improved processes for picture buffers and associated signaling in video coding.
- U.S. Patent No. 8,776,204 (“Secury dynamic authority delegation”) claims a superior resource-access authorization process.
13 patents are unwieldy for a jury trial. Even though Nokia prides itself on almost 5,000 inventions int his field, compared to which 13 patents are a small set, some winnowing is inevitable. Paramount can try to file requests for inter partes review with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), though 60% of such requests have recently been denied on discretionary grounds and others on merits grounds. In the end, Paramount is hardly going to be able to avoid a damages verdict. And FRAND is not the answer. Some of those patents are not subject to any FRAND pledge, or at least not their encoding claims (which are, however, allegedly infringed by streamers).
Counsel
Local Delaware counsel: Farnan LLP’s Brian E. Farnan and Michael J. Farnan.
Out-of-state counsel: McKool Smith’s Warren Lipschitz, Erik Fountain, Alexander J. Chern, Kyra Cooper (whose name is misspelled in the complaint), R. Mitch Verboncoeur and Joshua Budwin.
Brazilian case
The court is the Tribunal de Justiça do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro State Court). The case number is PI 0211263-9 and it’s about sub-pixel interpolation technology.
So far, Nokia and all other companies asserting such patents have relied on Licks Attorneys (Carlos Aboim and Rodolfo Barreto typically having the lead). We have found out that this time the Licks partner in charge is Gabriel Mathias.