Context: Nokia inventors have created over 5,000 inventions enabling multimedia products and services since the year 2000. Last month, during Nokia’s Capital Markets Day 2025, Patrik Hammarén, President of Technology Standards, noted that as we enter the “golden window” for WiFi, 6G and video codecs, Nokia is making several strategic acquisitions to further strengthen its patent portfolio in those areas (November 19, 2025 ip fray article).
What’s new: Nokia has acquired 298 video patents covering coding and encoding technologies from LG Electronics, according to United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) assignment records (and as seen in the screenshot below).
Direct impact: The transaction is significant as LG has an active patent licensing program itself.
Wider ramifications: Following the successful completion of all its smartphone patent licensing renewals (February 8, 2024 ip fray article), Nokia is doubling down on areas such as WiFi, 6G, and video codecs – with this deal underlining the latter. Nokia also signed with Amazon earlier this year (March 31, 2025 ip fray article), and, in October, announced that a joint submission it made with Ericsson in video codec technologies to the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group and the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) was positively evaluated (October 27, 2025 ip fray article). Nokia is also currently embroiled in patent infringement litigation with Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount (December 1, 2025 ip fray article), and this transaction means those companies (as well as any other future defendants) may need licenses to the newly-acquired patents.
A spokesperson for Nokia told ip fray:
“Nokia is a major innovator in cellular, multimedia and WiFi standards. From time to time, we also strengthen our industry-leading patent portfolio with strategic acquisitions in certain areas.”