Nielsen has sued potential rival TVSquared, alleging that TVSquared infringed on a Nielsen patent covering measuring audience exposure across platforms while protecting viewers’ personal information.

TVSquared was acquired last week for about $160 million by Innovid, which said “the transaction unlocks a new currency-grade standard for cross-platform TV measurement, powered by the scale and automation of a global ad server.”

Nielsen is seeking to recover damages, including lost profits, treble damages and attorney’s fees.

“We are still reviewing the recently filed complaint, but plan to vigorously contest any allegation that we infringe any Nielsen patent. Our vision remains focused on meeting the market’s needs for an independent standard for cross-platform measurement,” Innovid said in a statement.

Also: Networks Ask Nielsen to Halt Release of 'Big Data' Numbers Until After Upfronts

The suit was filed March 4 in United State District court for the Western District of Texas in Waco and concerns U.S. Patent No. 10,063,378, entitled “Methods and Apparatus to Collect Distributed User Information for Media Impressions and Search Terms.”

“TVSquared’s infringement has harmed and will continue to harm Nielsen,” Nielsen says in the suit.

TVSquared’s conduct “has caused and will in the absence of an injunction continue to cause Nielsen to suffer damages, which in no event are less than a reasonable royalty, and which include, but are not limited to, lost sales and sales opportunities,” the suit says. “Unless and until TVSquared is enjoined by this court from further infringement, Nielsen will continue to suffer damages and irreparable injury for which it has no adequate remedy at law.”

Nielsen explained why it is suing in a statement.

“In the world of media measurement, Nielsen’s commitment to consumer privacy has been unmatched. Nielsen has always designed its products and services with privacy at the core, and Nielsen has foundational IP related to the technology surrounding privacy-enhancing use of consumer demographic data for audience measurement. Nielsen has spent years making the investments in continually innovating the technology behind privacy-compliant solutions for linking viewership data with consumer demographics, making its trusted measurement and outcomes data the gold standard for the industry," Nielsen said.

"We fully support and encourage innovation in media measurement. But we will not support businesses misappropriating our intellectual property. Over the years, we’ve invested heavily in the foundational intellectual property that allows us to generate trusted data that meets marketers’ needs while simultaneously protecting consumers’ privacy. We will continue to innovate, and we will protect those innovations from unauthorized use and sale by other companies," Nielsen said it its statement.

The suit comes at a time when Nielsen faces increased competition and its media company clients are intensifying their search for alternatives to Nielsen, which has long dominated the audience measurement business.

NBCUniversal last year sent out requests for proposals to measurement companies seeking more up-to-date approaches to estimated audiences in a more fragmented media environment.

TVSquared was among the companies that made a proposal to provide a cross platform ad currency, along with Nielsen, 605, Comscore, Oracle, Samba TV, TVSquared and VideoAmp.

In its evaluation, NBCU called TV Squired  a strong contender, but said it was still in the process of “developing competency.” ■

In a big victory for the smart device essential patents holder, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a district court decision and lifted a permanent, worldwide, injunction against Qualcomm. 

Computer companies will appeal that decision to the full circuit.

The Federal Trade Commission had contended that Qualcomm had unlawfully monopolized the "code division multiple access ('CDMA') and premium long-term evolution ('LTE')" cellular modern chip markets, and the district court agreed.  

 Related: DOJ Issues New Advice on Standard Essential Patents 

But a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit was unpersuaded. Writing for the majority, Judge Consuelo M. Callahan said that the district court "erred in holding that Qualcomm was under an antitrust duty to license rival chip manufacturers." 

In May 2019, a California district court ruled that the way Qualcomm licensed its modem chips for handsets was anticompetitive--siding with the Federal Trade Commission, which had sued the company for having "harmed competition in two markets for baseband processors [modem chips]."   

But saying that Qualcomm has demonstrated "serious questions" about that district court's decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit subsequently stayed that decision, the latest twist in a year's-long legal battle. 

Qualcomm had refused to license standard essential patents for smart phone technology in promises it made to standards-setting bodies and charged excessive royalty rates, the district court concluded, agreeing with the FTC that Qualcomm was preserving its monopoly of the LTE chip market, effectively levying a surcharge on competitor's chips.  

Not so fast said the Ninth Circuit panel. Callahan said that panel concluded that Qualcomm's policy for licensing its standard essential patents, "however novel," did not violate the Sherman Act prohibition on anticompetitive conduct.  

The FTC had argued that even if Qualcomm was not under an antitrust duty to license its patents to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) it was engaged in anticompetitive conduct, but the court said it had not sufficiently explained how Qualcomm's alleged breach of a contractural commitment by itself impaired its rivals.  

She said given that the FTC failed on that count, it looked less critically at Qualcomm's pro-competitive arguments for its OEM-level licensing policy, which the judge said, in any case, "appeared to be reasonable and consistent with current industry practice." 

The district court held that Qualcomm's licensing royalty rates equated to an anticompetitive surcharge. Wrong, said Callahan. "The panel held that Qualcomm’s patent-licensing royalties and 'no license, no chips' policy did not impose an anticompetitive surcharge on rivals’ modem chip sales. Instead, these aspects of Qualcomm’s business model were 'chip-supplier neutral' and did not undermine competition in the relevant markers," she wrote.

As to the two agreements with Apple (2011 and 2013) that were the subject of the FTC complaint and court decision, Callahan wrote: "The panel held further that Qualcomm’s 2011 and 2013 agreements with Apple have not had the actual or practical effect of substantially foreclosing competition in the CDMA modem chip market. Also, because these agreements were terminated years ago by Apple itself, there was nothing to be enjoined." 

“Judge Koh's [district court] opinion detailed how Qualcomm’s anticompetitive business practices have driven its competitors out of the modem business and raised prices in the cellular industry," said Joshua Landau, patent counsel for the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA). "The 9th Circuit ignored those factual findings and greenlit Qualcomm's anticompetitive business practices.

"CCIA is disappointed in the 9th Circuit's deeply flawed decision and hopes that the Federal Trade Commission will ask for review en banc to correct the numerous errors in the panel opinion."

TiVo is once again ratcheting up the legal pressure on Comcast in its three-year court battle to get the cable company to once again pay technology royalties.

Through its Rovi division, the tech vendor Friday filed another complaint in the venue in which it has had its greatest success against Comcast, the International Trade Commission.

The new ITC complaint comes days after TiVo filed a new federal patent infringement lawsuit in California, and it pertains to the same six patents. Those patents, TiVo said, enable features on Comcast’s X1 video platform such as the X1 Sports App, multi-room DVR and set-top box integrations of streaming apps like Netflix.

Related: TiVo Adds Patent Suit Against Comcast in California

In November 2017, litigating an earlier TiVo complaint, the ITC threw out TiVo’s arguments on most of half a dozen patents. However, the organization sided with TiVo on two patents, one of which pertained to remote recording on X1. In order to keep importing X1 set-top boxes into the U.S., Comcast had to either pay TiVo royalties, or ditch the remote recording feature. It chose the latter.

And that, in a nutshell, is TiVo’s strategy, as expressed to MCN in an interview with one of the company’s intellectual property lawyers last year. Fighting in myriad legal forums, TiVo/Rovi may lose the vast majority of claims in venues like the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeals Board. However, eventually, as it battles Comcast over enough technology patents, it will win enough battles—and Comcast will have had to disable too many X1 features and will be forced to settle.

Comcast executives say that TiVo’s patents are outdated, and that it has developed its X1 technologies in its own Philadelphia labs.

But for TiVo, the battle is existential—its whole technology licensing business is undermined if the second biggest U.S. pay TV company successfully gets away without paying tribute.

All of this litigation, of course, isn’t cheap. TiVo’s IP litigation costs increased by $11.3 million last year, and they’re sure to shoot up again this year.

"For more than a decade, Comcast partnered with Rovi to enable its customers to watch what they want, when they want on TV,” said Arvin Patel, executive VP and chief intellectual property officer at TiVo/Rovi. “However, because Comcast refuses to pay licensing fees to use our technology, its customers are being charged more for fewer features, including no access to critical DVR features such as remote recording. As a result, Comcast customers are the only ones that are unable to hit 'record' with a simple tap or swipe from their provider's app when they are outside of their home.”

The U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board has once again sided with Comcast in its intellectual property battle with TiVo, invalidating two more of the latter’s patents.

The patents include No. 9,172,987, “Methods and Systems for Updating Functionality of a Set-top Box Using Markup Language”; and No. 8,713,595, “Interactive Program Guide Systems and Processes.” (No. 9,172,987 was ruled invalid on Sept. 7, while No. 8,713,595 was invalidated in an earlier Aug. 27 ruling.)

Related: TiVo Settles Patent Skirmish With Altice in Portugal

In its New York Southern District federal lawsuit against Comcast, TiVo now has only one patent left that hasn’t been ruled invalid. Comcast has filed for a summary judgement of non-infringement to strike down that final patent.

In August, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board also determined that Patent No. 8,621,512, which deals with DVR recording features, was also invalid.

Since 2016, TiVo has aggressively targeted Comcast in venues including a New York federal court and the International Trade Commission, seeking to collect licensing fees on technologies that it claims are used in Comcast’s X1 video operating system.

TiVo said its litigation costs increased to $5.6 million in the second quarter, mainly due to its battle with Comcast.

Related: Comcast Wins Battle in Patent War with TiVo

Formed in 2016 following Rovi Corp.’s $1.1 billion takeover of DVR pioneer TiVo, New TiVo has more than 6,000 patents and pending patent applications on file and has been largely successful in getting pay TV operators and technology companies to pay licensing fees.

The inability to bring Comcast to heel could have profound implications to TiVo’s bid to collect on its patents from other complanies moving forward.

“We are pleased that the Patent Office agrees with us that these Rovi patents are invalid,” Comcast said in a statement. “We look forward to rulings from the Patent Office in our challenges to Rovi’s other patents.”

Responded TiVo: “There are over 1,000 different patents in Rovi's portfolio and Comcast's unprecedented effort to try to challenge a handful of them doesn't change the fact that they have already been found in violation of critical Rovi patents and are being forced to punish their own customers by removing popular features. In this particular instance we are optimistic about our appeal options, we expect that Comcast will continue to be found in violation of these and other patents in the future and are unwavering in our commitment to take the necessary legal actions to ensure Comcast renews its long-standing license to fairly compensate Rovi for the use of our IP.”

Sprint was awarded $139.8 million by a federal jury Friday, stemming from a six-year old suit that claimed Time Warner Cable infringed on its patents for voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP), a method of transferring voice calls over digital lines.

Sprint originally filed the suit in 2011, alleging that TWC, Comcast, Cox and Cable One violated at least 12 VoIP patents by selling systems and services that used technology protected by the patents. The suits were filed in federal court in Kansas City.

Sprint was obviously pleased with the verdict and according to a report in Bloomberg News, Charter was disappointed and weighing its options.

Comcast is next up on the trial docket, scheduled to go before the same judge – John W. Lungstrum – on March 7.

According to Bloomberg, TWC (now owned by Charter Communications) “willfully infringed” on five of Sprint’s patents, meaning the damages could be trebled.

Cox Communications countersued Sprint in 2011 alleging that Sprint’s claims were too vague and therefore invalid. A federal court agreed with Cox but that decision was reversed on appeal in 2016. The current status of that case could not be determined.

Sprint’s suit against Cable One was dismissed by the court in November 2016, according to court documents.