March 14, 2020
As the International Trade Commission (ITC) prepares to review aspects of an unfavorable initial determination in an action brought against Toyota (together with several companies in the supply chain for its infotainment systems), Broadcom has targeted the streaming service of Netflix (8:20-cv-00529) in a new case filed in the Central District of California. Nine patents have been asserted, three of which were previously at issue against Amazon; two against ASUSTek and Sony. They generally relate to various aspects of delivering content over a network (e.g., load balancing, data compression, encoding/decoding, etc.), with infringement allegations targeted at Netflix’s on-demand streaming service, which Broadcom pleads has depressed “the market for traditional cable services that require set top boxes” for use in which Broadcom provides semiconductor chips.