Netflix lawsuit sues VMware over virtual machine patents

The streaming giant says VMware is in violation of five patents

News By Sead Fadilpašić published 24 December 2024

• Netflix claims Broadcom's subsidiary VMware is in violation of five patents
• It claims VMware knew it was violating patents for more than a decade
• Netflix is now demanding VMware pays for damages caused

Video streaming behemoth Netflix is suing Broadcom over virtual machine (VM) patents.

According to the lawsuit, filed with a California federal court, Broadcom’s subsidiary VMware is in violation of five different patent rights, including the rights for “424 Patent”, “707 Patent”, “891 Patent”, “893 Patent”, and “122 Patent”.

These cover the various aspects of operating virtual machines. Three discuss CPU usage in virtual machines, and two discuss starting up at least one virtual machine in a physical machine by a load balancer.

Deliberate infringment

“Broadcom and VMware, jointly and severally, have infringed, and continue to infringe, at least Claim 1 of the ’424 Patent, either literally or under the doctrine of equivalents, by making, using, selling, and/or offering for sale within the United States and/or importing into the United States products that are covered by at least Claim 1 of the ’424 Patent.

These products include, but are not limited to VMware vSphere Foundation, VMware Cloud Foundation, VMware

Cloud on AWS, Azure VMware Solution, Google Cloud VMware Engine, Oracle Cloud VMware Solution, IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions, Alibaba Cloud VMware Service, as well as any other vSphere-based products and/or services (collectively, the “’424 Accused Products”),” it says in the lawsuit.

Netflix further claims VMware knew about the “424 Patent” since at least early August 2012, “when the ’424 Patent was cited by an examiner at the United States Patent and Trademark Office during a rejection of VMware’s application that ultimately issued as U.S. Patent No. 8,650,564.”

Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!

Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors