Adeia, the IP licensing unit recently spun off from Xperi Corp., announced a multi-year renewal deal with Verizon, sustaining the patent group's particularly strong position in the U.S. pay TV business.
“Our patent license extension with Verizon further confirms the value and longevity of Adeia’s intellectual property portfolios, including in the U.S. pay-TV market,” said Dr. Mark Kokes, Adeia’s chief licensing officer and general manager for media, in a statement.
Indeed, much has changed in regard to Adeia, which was established as an independent company last October and given a fancy ancient Greek name. But its ability to get U.S. pay TV operators to pay tech licensing royalties remains very much the same.
Born out of aughts-era DVD security company Macrovision and its 2008 merger with Gemstar-TV Guide, Rovi had already assembled a significant patent library by 2016, the year it entered a $1.1 billion merger with TiVo and formed an IP licensing giant with more than 6,000 tech patents.
In 2020, the Rovi patent business famously won a four-year row with Comcast that effectively served as a referendum for it to keep on billing each and every pay TV operator in North America, which it has.
In 2021, nearly two years after Xperi Corp. paid $3 billion to acquire the combined TiVo/Rovi, Xperi reported $350 million in revenue from its tech licensing division.
