Giants fight each other! Nokia sues Amazon for copyright infringement

The lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court in Delaware alleges that both companies infringed certain patents held by Nokia covering digital video compressed using the H.264 decoder.

The format , also known as Advanced Video Coding, was developed by a joint venture of several different individuals and companies and was standardized by the International Telecommunication Union and the International Standards Organization in the early 21st century.

It can compress high-definition video files to a size suitable for storage on the server and transmission to users. Compared with uncompressed video files, the compressed video quality does not decrease significantly.

In a nearly 600-page complaint, Nokia accused Amazon of allowing customers of its Prime Video, Freevee and Twitch services to stream video content encoded in both the H.264 standard and the newer H.265 standard.

The complaint alleges that use of the standards violates at least 15 patents owned by Nokia, and that when Nokia tried to license the technology to Amazon, its offer was rejected.

Industry insiders said Nokia spent most of its written submissions against Amazon on specific details, such as explaining how it determined the company infringed its patents , including various examples gleaned from off-the-shelf assessment software that attempted to highlight Amazon's patent infringement through live videos streamed by Twitch and on-demand movies, clips and trailers available through Prime Video and Freevee.

Nokia's legal complaint against HP is almost identical, though shorter at 130 pages. HP's computers are said to use the same H.264 and H.265 patents.

Nokia said it had been trying to work with HP on a licensing deal for the technology since 2019 , but like Amazon, that effort came to nothing. Nokia said HP has sold "hundreds of millions of infringing products since then without paying any royalties."

An Amazon spokesman said the company does not comment on ongoing litigation. HP officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Amazon

Nokia