Nokia announced multiple new patent licensing agreements for various technologies, including video. Key deals involve Hisense and other TV makers for video technologies, and a pending UK trial to set global licensing terms for Warner Bros. and Paramount streaming services. The company also signed agreements with Snap Inc. and other social messaging firms for video streaming, alongside cellular and Wi-Fi patent deals with Chinese automakers.
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Add as preferred sourceNokia is aggressively pivoting its licensing strategy from hardware-centric cellular patents to the software-driven multimedia stack. By securing deals with Snap and targeting major streamers like Max and Paramount+, Nokia is asserting its position as a primary landlord of video coding and content delivery IP. The upcoming UK trial is a high-stakes moment for the ecosystem; a favorable ruling would provide Nokia a court-mandated valuation that could force other holdout streaming platforms into bilateral agreements. Watch for the December 2028 functional freeze of 6G specifications, which Nokia aims to influence with AI-native and high-bandwidth multimedia standards.
Nokia's video streaming patent licensing program has accelerated through 2026, with the company now holding seven bilateral agreements covering encoding, decoding, and content delivery patents. Tejas Shah, who joined Nokia in November 2025 from InterDigital's licensing team, confirmed the Snap deal and a separate social messaging agreement as his first public disclosures in the role. Shah previously led license negotiations for InterDigital's smartphone and video services licensing programs, bringing direct experience in the same patent-assertion vertical Nokia is now expanding.
The UK Patents Court proceedings against Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount have become a landmark test of how English courts handle interim RAND determinations when party valuations diverge by orders of magnitude. Following a January 2026 hearing before Mr Justice Meade, both streaming groups withdrew all parallel litigation worldwide and agreed to a single global RAND licence to be settled by the court. WBD and Paramount argued for rates scaled from video codec licensing pools, producing a lower bound of approximately $250,000 to $300,000, while Nokia's position based on its bilateral agreements was roughly three orders of magnitude higher. The court gave considerable weight to a lump sum offer Nokia made to Paramount in 2024 as a more reliable starting point than either side's comparables.
Nokia's decision to consolidate all claims into a single UK forum marks a strategic shift in how video patent disputes are resolved. The company withdrew its pending actions against Warner and Paramount at the Unified Patent Court and in Munich, becoming the second licensor after Huawei to agree to an interim licence set by the UK court. Nokia stated that licensing principles are still evolving in the streaming services market and expressed confidence the court would endorse its valuation based on existing bilateral agreements, while reiterating its preference for legally binding arbitration in a neutral forum as a more effective mechanism for global patent disputes.
