European technology company The Kudelski Group announced that it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) and its AOL subsidiary.
The suit was filed by Kudelski's OpenTV and Nagra France SAS subsidiaries in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The suit alleges that Verizon and AOL have infringed on seven U.S. patents owned by Open TV and Nagra France in its FiOS TV, FiOS TV Everywhere, Verizon Redbox Instant and Go90 services.
The lawsuit also alleges infringements with AOL's Spot On advertising and streaming video services. Verizon recently completed its acquisition of AOL. In their announcement, the Kudelski subsidiaries didn't identify those patents in question.
A Verizon spokesperson said the company doesn't comment on pending litigation.
Switzerland-based Kudelski holds more than 4,500 TV tech patents and has routinely used those patents in patent-infringement lawsuits against a variety of players, including three federal complaints against Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) since 2012. Just last week, OpenTV and Nagra filed suit against Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) over five patents related to accessing digital content on mobile devices.
OpenTV, which was spun out of Sun Microsystems and Thomson Multimedia and became a Nagra subsidiary in 2010, holds 800 of Kudelski's patents. Nagra says on its website that it has 120 pay-TV operator customers using its multiscreen solutions, including OpenTV's middleware products.
For more:
- read this Kudelski Group press release
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