Defendant
1 case as defendant.
Sony Pictures Television, Inc. (SPT) is an American television production and distribution studio headquartered at 10202 West Washington Boulevard, Culver City, California. It is a subsidiary of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is itself a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sony Group Corporation (TYO: 6758; NYSE: SONY). The SPT name dates to 2002, succeeding Screen Gems, Columbia Pictures Television, TriStar Television and Columbia TriStar Television. SPT does not report standalone financials; the only verified public ownership/ticker data is at the Sony Group parent level, so SPT-specific headcount and revenue are not publicly broken out.
Operations. SPT produces, distributes and syndicates television programming worldwide across genres and platforms. Its businesses include a large film/television library and formats catalog; first-run and off-network series; game shows and daytime dramas (e.g., Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, Days of our Lives, The Young and the Restless); wholly-owned and joint-venture production companies in the US, Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific; and linear/digital channel operations distributed internationally. It also had a role in the streaming service Crackle, which became a joint venture with Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment.
Litigation posture. SPT is a pure defendant in this database: 1 tracked case as defendant, 0 as plaintiff. That pattern is consistent with an operating company being targeted rather than a patent assertion entity; SPT is a television studio, not a patent licensor, and the assertion concerns technology it is alleged to use rather than sell.
Notable case. Helios Streaming, LLC et al. v. Crackle, Inc. et al., No. 1:19-cv-01818 (D. Del., filed Sept. 27, 2019), the single tracked matter. Plaintiffs Helios Streaming (exclusive licensee) and Ideahub, Inc. (owner) asserted roughly ten patents relating to Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH) against Crackle, Crackle Plus, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, and Sony entities including SPT. Per RPX coverage, the portfolio originated with the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), with Korean entities retaining revenue interests; the complaints pleaded that many claims are subject to FRAND licensing obligations.
I note one caveat: the case list here is limited to one matter, so this profile should not be read as a complete account of SPT's patent-litigation history.
Patent infringement suit in which U.S. Patent No. 8,645,562 was listed among the asserted patents. Docket databases show the case closed/terminated, but the specific final outcome was not confirmed.