Nokia sues Paramount for streaming patent infringements
Nokia sues Paramount for streaming patent infringements
The lawsuit alleges that Paramount has been using Nokia-patented tech without permission.
The legal team at Paramount might actually be happy to deal with a lawsuit that doesn’t have anything to do with its recent merger with Skydance Media. While there are plenty of pending legal matters and lawsuits surrounding the merger, on Friday, a completely unrelated lawsuit joined the festivities as well. Reuters reported that Paramount is now being sued by Nokia over the use of that company’s streaming technology.
Key Details:
- Secret code: Paramount has allegedly been using Nokia encoding technology without a license.
- Company-wide: Nokia alleges that the tech has been used on Paramount+, BET+, and Pluto TV.
- Other cases pending: Paramount has also been sued by multiple shareholders over its Skydance merger.
Nokia is suing Paramount over the improper use of 13 streaming technology patents. The technology in question enables the compression of raw video files for streaming, and Nokia alleges that Paramount has been using this tech without licensing it properly.
Nokia says that Paramount has used this technology across its suite of streaming services, including Paramount+, Pluto TV, and BET+. The case will now be taken up in Delaware federal court, and Nokia has also leveled a complaint against Paramount in Brazil.
Paramount is not the first company to have faced allegations of improper technology use from Nokia. Acer, Asus, and Hisense were all sued this year by the company for similar streaming technology issues, and Amazon and HP have settled related disputes with Nokia under confidential terms.
“Our preference is to avoid litigation, but Paramount left us with no choice,” Nokia said in a statement to Reuters.
Paramount and Nokia began negotiating a potential licensing agreement in 2022, but still have not agreed to any official terms. Paramount’s new owners have said more than once that they want Paramount+ to be a tech-forward platform, and having good relationships with companies like Nokia will be important to ensure that future comes to pass.
This is far from the only legal action that Paramount faces at the moment. The company is still grappling with legal action brought by pension funds that allege its deal with Skydance improperly enriched former controlling shareholder Shari Redstone at the expense of other investors. Those cases are still working through the legal system.
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