Kudelski's OpenTV Files Patent Suit Against NFL Enterprises

CHESEAUX, SWITZERLAND and SAN FRANCISCO – The Kudelski Group announced Monday that its OpenTV, Inc. subsidiary has filed a patent infringement suit against NFL Enterprises, LLC in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

The lawsuit alleges that NFL infringes seven U.S. patents owned by OpenTV and identifies the infringing products and services as NFL’s streaming, interactive video content experience provided on NFL.com and other NFL services, including NFL Network/NFL Redzone, NFL Now, NFL Game Pass, NFL Mobile, the NFL App, and NFL Fantasy Football.

Kudelski took control of OpenTV in November of 2009. In December, 2012, the subsidiary filed an infringement lawsuit against Netflix in U.S. District Court in Delaware. A parallel suit against Netflix in The Netherlands was rejected by a court in The Hague, according to Broadband TV News. The U.S. version of the suit was settled in January of 2015 with an agreement by Netflix to use Open TV technology.

Imagine Communications took the OpenTV Eclipse advertising software in 2014. That same year, Apple was sued in a San Francisco federal court. A German court ruled against Apple in a parallel suit, and Apple ultimately settled in August of last year with a “comprehensive patent license agreement,” Reuters said. That same year, Open TV and Nagra went after Verizon and AOL, also in the U.S. District Court foe the Eastern District of Texas. Verizon settled last February in a multi-year patent cross licensing agreement.

Last June, Kudelski announced plans to a U.S. headquarters in Phoenix, Ariz.