Context:
- Nokia has concluded five patent license agreements with video streamers on an amicable basis, most recently with pay-TV provider Starz (October 27, 2025 ip fray article).
- Another video-streaming patent agreement resulted from a settlement with Amazon in the spring (March 31, 2025 ip fray article). Amazon comes across as generally unprepared to take video-streaming patent licenses short of litigation. It launched a pre-emptive strike against licensing firm InterDigital that has created inter-jurisdictional friction (October 30, 2025 ip fray article).
- Paramount, whose general counsel was staunchly pro-patent as the U.S. antitrust chief of President Trump’s first term, also decided to take its chances in court. Nokia brought patent infringement lawsuits against the famous studio in the U.S. and Brazil this past summer (August 22, 2025 ip fray article). That apparently didn’t bring the Hollywood icon to the negotiating table as Nokia filed additional cases in the Unified Patent Court’s (UPC) Mannheim Local Division (LD) and the Landgericht MĂĽnchen I (Munich I Regional Court).
What’s new:
- Nokia has now filed video patent infringement lawsuits against Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) in the same jurisdictions as against Paramount: 13 patents in the District of Delaware (11 of which are being asserted against Paramount), two in Rio de Janeiro, and two in the Munich I Regional Court and one in the UPC’s Mannheim LD.
- WBD has already reacted: shortly after midnight local time, the company filed a declaratory judgment (DJ) action over Nokia patents in SĂŁo Paulo, indicating that they fully expected litigation. That pattern is not new: Hisense is presently pursuing a DJ action in SĂŁo Paulo against Access Advance licensors (September 24, 2025 ip fray article; Nokia is not an Access Advance licensor).
Direct impact:
- The cases can’t be consolidated per se, but courts can very efficiently decide parallel patent cases, and often hold consolidated hearings, where the patents overlap. Practically, the Paramount and Warner Bros. cases will be decided near-simultaneously should neither settle.
- Settlements are rather likely as the defendants know they do not have a FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) defense: the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) FRAND pledge (called RAND, but it means the same) covers decoding, not encoding, at least in the impartial analysis of two U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC or ITC) judges who were not persuaded by Amazon’s arguments to the contrary (item 1 of our February 11, 2025 article). On two of the patents being asserted against WBD, and on family members of two other such patents, Nokia prevailed over Amazon at the ITC.
Wider ramifications:
- Not only in disputes with streaming services but also with device makers Acer, ASUS and Hisense (April 11, 2025 ip fray article), Nokia is leveraging synergies between parallel cases over overlapping patents.
- We know from our industry sources that more patent enforcement actions against video streamers may be filed in the months ahead, always subject to whether license agreements can be struck prior to litigation. With so much going on in that field, we are going to adjust our paywalling policy shortly: instead of making all articles closely related to that topic available for free, we are going to make it a case-by-case determination, though most of those articles will continue to be free.
Defendant corporate group
WBD’s video streaming business (Max, Discovery+, and related services) has about 126 million global subscribers and generates roughly $2.7–$2.8 billion in quarterly direct-to-consumer revenue as of mid-2025, with the segment returning to profitability and guided to over $1 billion profit for full-year 2025.
WBD and Paramount are not affiliate entities, at least not for now: Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD; corporate website) owns Warner Bros. and Discovery, while Paramount belongs to David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance holding.
Plaintiff suggests WBD refused to engage in negotiations
Nokia, which is known to have patented almost 5,000 multimedia-related inventions, provided the following statement:
Nokia is a leader in the development of video technologies, including video compression technology that makes streaming of High-Definition video possible. Warner Brother’s streaming services rely upon our patented inventions in areas such as video compression, content delivery, and content recommendation. Litigation is never our first choice, and the vast majority of our patent licensing agreements are agreed amicably, but we will always defend our intellectual property. We hope that Warner Brothers now engage with us to reach an agreement to pay for the use of our technologies in their streaming services.
In the combination of WBD’s near-instantaneous DJ action in Brazil and the above statement by Nokia, one can deduce that Nokia presumably warned WBD against infringement litigation unless the media powerhouse would work out a license agreement, but WBD simply prepared for litigation. For the reason stated further above, WBD will find it hard to convince a court that it has a FRAND defense, but even if it surmounted that hurdle, it could be that this pattern of conduct will be held against it. By contrast, Nokia’s offers have been accepted by a handful of WBD competitors without any litigation and Nokia has been deemed FRAND-compliant by different judges.
Patents-in-suit
Delaware patents-in-suit
These are the U.S. patents-in-suit:
- U.S. Patent No. 9,571,833 (“Method for coding and an apparatus”) claims an improved “merge” coding mode for video coding. This is the first of two patents being asserted against WBD but not previously against Paramount.
- U.S. Patent No. 10,523,960 (“Motion prediction in video coding”) claims improved bi-prediction techniques for video coding. This is the second of two patents being asserted against WBD but not previously against Paramount.
- 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. 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.
European patents-in-suit
These are the European patents-in-suit:
- Munich I Regional Court:
- EP2130150 (“Systems, methods, devices, and computer program products for arranging a user’s media files”) this relates to content recommendations based on user preferences such as a wish list.
- EP4099700 (“Motion prediction in video coding”) is about generating and using motion prediction information in video encoding.
- UPC Mannheim LD:
- EP4250732 (“Motion prediction in video coding” is, like EP’700, about generating and using motion prediction information in video encoding.
- Brazilian patents-in-suit
- BR112013002029-6: Method and apparatus for providing entropy encoding with balanced complexity in video encoding.
- PI 0211263-9: Method for interpolating a sub-pixel value in the encoding of video.
Update on Paramount litigation: partial motion to dismiss
Two weeks ago, Paramount brought a motion to dismiss Nokia’s Delaware lawsuit with respect to four of the 13 patents-in-suit: U.S Patent Nos. 8,776,204; 8,050,321; 6,968,005; and 7,082,450. Paramount argues that those patents are abstract (35 U.S.C. § 101). Nokia has received a consensual extension until November 13, 2025 for its opposition brief.
Such Alice challenges are part and parcel of U.S. patent litigation in the digital industries, and there are cases where most or all patents are being challenged on those grounds, as opposed to slightly less than a third of them in this case.
Two of the four patents targeted by Paramount’s partial motion to dismiss (the ‘204 and ‘450 patents) are not among the 13 patents asserted against WBD, but the other two (the ‘321 and ‘005 patents) are being asserted again.
Nokia’s counsel (same in WBD and Paramount campaigns)
U.S. counsel
Out-of-state counsel: McKool Smith’s Warren Lipschitz, Erik Fountain, Alexander J. Chern, Kyra Cooper, R. Mitch Verboncoeur and Joshua Budwin.
Local Delaware counsel: Farnan LLP’s Brian E. Farnan and Michael J. Farnan.
UPC and German counsel
Arnold Ruess’s Cordula Schumacher, Dr. Arno Risse (“RiĂźe” in German), Tim Smentkowski, Jan Wergin, Tuğçe Altun, and Victoria Thuesing (“ThĂĽsing” in German). For a non-exhaustive list of Arnold Ruess’s achievements, see the firm’s ip fray profile.
Cohausz & Florack’s Dr. Christoph Walke and Lars Grannemann.
Brazilian counsel
So far, Nokia and all other companies asserting such patents have relied on Licks Attorneys (Carlos Aboim and Rodolfo Barreto typically having the lead). The Licks partner in charge of the Brazilian Nokia cases is Gabriel Mathias.