Nokia and Amazon have reached an agreement that ends a patent litigation spat spanning multiple countries over the tech giant’s alleged unauthorized use of Nokia technology related to streaming video.
The Finnish telecom equipment vendor filed a lawsuit against Amazon in a Delaware federal court in 2023, claiming the company infringed on patents held by Nokia for streaming technology related to a video compression standard. It alleged unauthorized use by Amazon of Nokia’s patent-protected technology in its Prime Video, Twitch, and now-defunct Freevee services, as well as streaming devices. At the time, Nokia’s complaint claimed it tried to license the technology to Amazon but was rebuffed.
Nokia’s legal pursuit against Amazon over alleged streaming video tech patent violations extended to lawsuits also filed in Germany, India, the UK and with the European Unified Patent Court.
Amazon, meanwhile, filed a counter lawsuit against Nokia in Delaware in 2024, accusing the telecom equipment vendor of infringing on its cloud computing patents.
Now all patent litigation between the two is settled across all jurisdictions as Nokia announced Monday that the companies reached an agreement covering the use of Nokia’s video technologies in Amazon’s streaming services and streaming devices. Financial and other terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
“We are pleased to have reached agreement on the use of Nokia’s video technologies in Amazon’s streaming services and devices,” said Arvin Patel, chief licensing officer of New Segments at Nokia, in a statement.
Nokia had already scored a win over Amazon in Germany last September – when, as Reuters reported, a court there ruled Amazon had used Nokia patented video technologies without a license. It was a decision Amazon said it disagreed with at the time, adding it wouldn’t affect any existing customers or Fire TV devices. Amazon also asserted that Nokia was demanding more for video tech patents than other companies and had rejected Amazon’s offer, which the tech giant claimed “was fair and in line with market rates” in a statement to Reuters.
Nokia has been aggressive in pursuing litigation against those it believes are violating the company’s standard essential patents and using its technologies without a license. At the same time Nokia filed the lawsuit against Amazon in the US it filed a similar claim against HP, alleging patent infringement also related to compression and encoding video technologies but used in the company’s desktop and laptop computers.
That litigation was resolved last year after Nokia and HP reached an agreement in October for a multi-year patent license agreement covering the use of Nokia video tech in HP devices. Under the agreement HP will make royalty payments to Nokia.
And Nokia has gone up against others as it looks to enforce licensed use of its patents, including Mercedes-Benz and litigation with Lenovo that was resolved in 2021 when the companies reached a multi-year patent cross-licensing agreement.