Netflix Sues VMware Of Broadcom Over US Virtual Machine Patents

Netflix Sues VMware Of Broadcom Over US Virtual Machine Patents

Demands an unspecified amount of monetary damages

Netflix has sued Broadcom Inc in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing the chipmaker's cloud computing subsidiary VMware of violating the patent rights in ‘virtual machines’ that run another computer's operating software on a host computer.

The lawsuit said VMware's cloud software infringed five Netflix patents covering aspects of operating virtual machines.

Last year, the Palo Alto, California-based Broadcom acquired VMware for $69 billion.

Netflix's lawsuit stated that VMware's vSphere virtualization platform (for deploying and managing virtual machines), infringed the streaming giant's patents on virtual-machine communications.

Since 2018, Netflix and Broadcom have been embroiled in a separate patent dispute over Netflix's alleged infringement of Broadcom patents related to video streaming technology. The cases were filed in California, Germany and the Netherlands.

Broadcom's US lawsuit against Netflix is scheduled for trial in June.