FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Amazon’s video streaming services in Germany will continue as before, the U.S. technology giant said on Friday, despite a German court ruling that it was violating a patent owned by Finnish network equipment maker Nokia.
The regional court in the western city of Duesseldorf said earlier on Friday that it ruled that Amazon could no longer continue its streaming services in its current technical form in the country, or else face fines of 250,000 euros ($259,000) for “every case of violation”.
“Prime Video will comply with this local judgement and is currently considering next steps. However, there is absolutely no risk at all for customers losing access to Prime Video,” Amazon’s Prime Video spokesperson told Reuters in an emailed statement.
Nokia welcomed the court’s decision and said it meant that its patent covers streaming features such as Amazon Prime Video “which now are subject to an injunction in Germany”.
“…the innovation ecosystem breaks down if patent holders are not fairly compensated for the use of their technologies, as it becomes much harder for innovators to fund the development of next generation technologies,” Arvin Patel, Nokia’s chief licensing officer in charge of new segments, told Reuters in an emailed statement.
Amazon said the court ruling in Dusseldorf was only about a limited functionality of the service in Germany, to cast videos from the Prime Video application on one device to another, and did not touch the service in general.
Last September, a regional court in Munich gave a similar ruling in Nokia’s favour, stating that Amazon’s Fire TV streaming devices infringed Nokia’s patent.
Amazon said at the time that it disagreed with the Munich court’s decision and expected the situation to be resolved soon, without being specific.
Amazon said it had worked with a number of companies to license video patents.
“Nokia is demanding more than all those companies combined and has rejected our offer, which was fair and in line with market rates,” Amazon said in an emailed statement to Reuters at the time.
Weekly magazine WirtschaftsWoche reported the Duesseldorf ruling earlier on Friday.
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(Reporting by Ludwig Burger and Hakan Ersen in Frankfurt, Anne Kauranen in Helsinki; Editing by Riham Alkousaa and Susan Fenton)
