6 TV Brands, Chipmakers Infringed Broadcom Video Patents, Complaints Allege

LG, Vizio and four other companies were charged Tuesday in a series of federal complaints with infringing at least one of four Broadcom patents on video encoding and decoding, graphics processing and DVR functionality. The complaints (in Pacer) filed in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, California, also named Funai, MStar Semiconductor, MediaTek and Sigma Designs as defendants. The complaints against the TV brands and chipmakers all seek injunctions barring U.S. imports of the infringing products, plus damages “in an amount no less than a reasonable royalty for each asserted patent.” Broadcom also filed patent infringement complaints against the six companies at the International Trade Commission. LG spokesman John Taylor declined comment Wednesday. Representatives of the other five companies didn’t respond to emails.