Roku loses legal royalty actions
August 1, 2025
By Chris Forrester
In July, the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts dismissed all 10 counts filed by Roku against clients of lawyers Sullivan & Cromwell (S&C) including Access Advance, Dolby Laboratories, and other Dolby entities (Dolby), and Sun Patent Trust (SPT), in a lawsuit seeking to set a global royalty (FRAND) rate for the HEVC patent pool.
Judge Richard G. Stearns determined that his Court “lacks jurisdiction to determine” a global FRAND royalty rate, noting that the “US patents constitute only a fraction of a larger portfolio.” The Court further concluded that its “opinion on the appropriate royalty rate would merely be advisory”, which is prohibited under US law.
Access Advance LLC is an independent licensing administrator company formed to lead the development, administration, and management of patent pools.
Roku sought declarations in December 2024 of patent non-infringement and declarations that pool and bilateral patent licenses offered by the defendants violated the fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing promises the patent owners had made to standard development organizations. The dismissal is an important precedent for patent pool administrators and licensors in a sparse field about when (if at all) it is appropriate for courts to set global royalty rates.
The HEVC Advance Patent Pool containing more than 27,500 patents owned by dozens of non-parties to the litigation and issued in 117 different countries and territories.
After dismissing Dolby and SPT for lack of personal jurisdiction, the court turned to Roku’s request to set royalty rates. The S&C team argued that the remaining counts against Access Advance should be dismissed because the court did not have jurisdiction to set a royalty rate for non-U.S. patents and that any such opinion would be advisory as the court could not compel acceptance of any rate it set. The court accepted all of these arguments.
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