Three Adeia Inc. subsidiaries—Adeia Guides Incorporated; Adeia Media Holdings LLC; and Adeia Technologies Incorporated—have together sued Disney (BAMTech, ESPN, Hulu) (1:24-cv-01231) over the provision of its various streaming services (i.e., Disney+, ESPN+, Hulu, and Hulu Live) and related server products. At issue are features such as "chunking", content delivery networks (CDNs), viewing progress tracking, and more, with six patents asserted in the District of Delaware complaint.
Of disparate origins, the patents (8,280,987; 8,542,705; 9,235,428; 9,762,639; 9,860,595; 10,165,324) are broadly directed to various aspects of media technologies, including content distribution (the '987 patent), media streaming (the '705 and '639 patents), graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for an application program (the '428 patent), and presenting media content based on a user's "viewing progress" (the '595 and '324 patents). Among Adeia's more than 30 litigation campaigns, this case initiates a new one.
Per the complaint, "Adeia's history of innovation stretches back over 30 years through its predecessor companies such as United Video, Gemstar, TiVo, Macrovision, Rovi, and MobiTV, to name but a few". Adeia took its current form in 2022 after a reorganization of Xperi Corporation following its prior acquisition of TiVo. Last year, the product business of the combined company was spun out as Xperi, Inc., with the remaining IP licensing operations continuing as Adeia. (The merger between the earlier Xperi and TiVo was announced in December 2019 and completed in October 2022.)
The plaintiffs plead that Adeia "presently owns over 11,500 patents and patent applications worldwide. Adeia's media patent portfolio covers fundamental aspects of the entertainment experience across platforms, including how users discover and stream media content". In the complaint, the Adeia plaintiffs tout their licensing prowess: "The identities of the companies who have chosen to become and remain Adeia licensees stand as a testament to the value of the technology Adeia offers. For example, top U.S. pay-TV providers (e.g., AT&T, Verizon, Cox Communications, Comcast, DirecTV, DISH, Spectrum, Frontier) have licensed Adeia's media patent portfolio. Likewise, streaming giants such as Google (YouTube, Google TV) and Paramount (Paramount+, Pluto TV) are among Adeia's licensees, as are hardware manufacturers such as Sony, TCL, Roku, and Samsung".
Adeia's last litigation resulted in a breakdown with prior licensee X (f/k/a Twitter). In August 2023, Adeia Media filed a complaint in California state court alleging that after Twitter's recent change in ownership, the company stopped making required quarterly payments stemming from an April 2019 license agreement between Twitter and the Adeia entities' predecessors, which included an annual license fee of $3M (according to that state court complaint), "unless Adeia Media agrees to a material reduction of the amount required to be paid under the License Agreement". X, then owned by Elon Musk, filed a Northern District of California complaint seeking declaratory judgments of noninfringement of several Adeia patents, contending that Adeia's state court action revealed confidential information in breach of the license agreement. The parties settled this past summer.
The new complaint spends pages alleging connections between the nine named defendants and the accused streaming services (i.e., Disney+, ESPN+, Hulu, and Hulu Live). The suit has yet to be assigned to a judge. Caldwell Cassady & Curry PC and Farnan LLP represent the plaintiffs. 11/7, District of Delaware.
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