Netflix sues Broadcom, claiming VMware infringes its virtualization patents

Streaming giant Netflix filed a lawsuit against Broadcom on Monday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing its VMware subsidiary of infringing five patents related to the operation of virtual machines (the ‘424 patent, the ‘707 patent, the ‘891 patent, “893 patent” and “122 patent”).

As reported by SiliconANGLE, three of these patents concern the use of CPUs in virtual machines, and two involve running at least one virtual machine using a load balancer. According to the lawsuit, patent violations were committed in VMware vSphere Foundation, VMware Cloud Foundation, VMware Cloud on AWS and cloud solutions offered by Microsoft, Google, Oracle, IBM and Alibaba.

In particular, in the above products, according to Netflix, violations of the “424 patent” were committed. Netflix said VMware has been willfully infringing since 2012, when it learned of the patent. “The ‘424 patent was cited by the US Patent and Trademark Office examiner in rejecting VMware’s application, which was ultimately issued as US Patent No. 8,650,564,” Netflix said in the suit.

Image source: Broadcom

Given VMware’s knowledge of the patent, Netflix claims that Broadcom and VMware engaged in “willful infringement” and asked the court to order Broadcom to pay unspecified damages.

The Netflix-Broadcom patent war began in 2018 when Broadcom sued Netflix, accusing it of infringing its patents on video streaming technology. Cases were filed in California, Germany and the Netherlands. Netflix’s lawsuit is scheduled for trial in June 2025.