Amazon Takes a License From Nokia: A Milestone for Content-Side Codec Royalties

Nokia has announced a patent agreement with Amazon, covering video technologies used in both “streaming services and devices.” That wording matters. While device licensing is nothing new, this marks one of the clearest public signs yet that content-side patent claims are being taken seriously and successfully enforced.

This is the first time Nokia has publicly named a licensee tied to content distribution. Two prior deals were mentioned on LinkedIn but without naming names. The fact that Amazon, a company with vast legal and financial resources, chose to settle rather than litigate suggests Nokia’s claims had merit. If Amazon thought it could win, it likely would have tried.

For streaming publishers and content platforms, this means content-related codec royalties are no longer a theoretical risk. Patent pools like Access Advance and Avanci may feel more confident in pursuing content-side royalties, and now they can cite a high-profile agreement in support of their claims.

The takeaway: if you are distributing video at scale, it is well past the time to start treating content-side royalties as a likely cost rather than a remote possibility.

About Jan Ozer

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I help companies train new technical hires in streaming media-related positions; I also help companies optimize their codec selections and encoding stacks and evaluate new encoders and codecs. I am a contributing editor to Streaming Media Magazine, writing about codecs and encoding tools. I have written multiple authoritative books on video encoding, including Video Encoding by the Numbers: Eliminate the Guesswork from your Streaming Video (https://amzn.to/3kV6R1j) and Learn to Produce Video with FFmpeg: In Thirty Minutes or Less (https://amzn.to/3ZJih7e). I have multiple courses relating to streaming media production, all available at https://bit.ly/slc_courses. I currently work as www.netint.com as a Senior Director in Marketing.

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