The OpenTV and Nagravision units of The Kudelski Group have filed a patent lawsuit against Shaw Communications that’s seeking to halt the rollout of BlueSky TV, a next-gen pay TV offering from Shaw that relies on Comcast’s X1 platform.
The lawsuit, filed against Shaw in the Federal Court of Canada, alleges that Shaw’s system infringes on six Canadian patents owned by Nagravision and OpenTV covering and related to pay TV purchasing, distribution, viewership monitoring and interactive television systems.
Per information posted at the court, the patents in question are:
-CA 2,378,692: Impulse purchase system for pay-television
-CA 2,270,723: Configurable monitoring of program viewership and usage of interactive applications
-CA 2,333,716: Module manager for interactive television system
-CA 2,432,609: Data distribution system
-CA 2,270,727: Reminder system for broadcast and non-broadcast events based on broadcast interactive applications
-CA 2,391,859: Method and device for filtering information
“The lawsuit seeks a preliminary injunction prohibiting deployment of Shaw’s recent release of ‘BlueSky TV,’ which is a licensed version of Comcast’s X1 platform,” Nagra and OpenTV said.
The Kudelski-owned companies are lobbing the lawsuit against Shaw just weeks after the MSO started to rollout BlueSky TV, a new pay TV offering that is powered by Comcast’s X1 platform that uses a new cloud-based interface and voice remotes and other advanced features.
Shaw, which initially licensed X1 for a mobile app called Free Range TV, launched BlueSky TV initially in Calgary in January, and expanded it to Vancouver last month.
RELATED: Shaw Launches ‘BlueSky TV,’ Powered by Comcast’s X1 Platform
Shaw and Comcast have been asked for comment.
UPDATE: A Shaw spokesperson issued this statement: “We can confirm that a claim was served on Shaw last Friday, Feb 24 and Shaw has engaged counsel and is assessing the claim, but otherwise we have no comment at this time.”
RELATED: X1 Licensing Not a ‘Big Financial Mover’ for Comcast
Fellow Canadian cable operator, Rogers Communications, has also announced that it will tap X1 for a new IPTV service that’s expected to debut by early 2018. Cox Communications has also licensed X1 for a new version of its “Contour” video service, which has already given Cox’s video subscriber results a lift.
