--Deal Follows April EPG Licensing Deal between the then-Macrovision and NDS
Rovi (formerly Macrovision--for more on the company's name change and the repositioning it heralds, see the interview with Rovi chief evangelist, Richard Bullwinkle, that was published on itvt.com, July 16th) and NDS announced Monday that Germany's largest cable operator, Kabel Deutschland (KDG), has signed a license agreement for Rovi's EPG patent portfolio.
The operator is licensing the patents under an agreement between Rovi and NDS that was announced in April. That agreement, which was billed as providing NDS with a license to the EPG patents under the then-Macrovision's Gemstar patent portfolio and as allowing NDS to offer licensed EPG's to its pay-TV platform operator customers in certain specified countries, also recently resulted in NDS customers, Foxtel and Canal+, signing patent license agreements with Macrovision/Rovi (see articles published on itvt.com, July 5th and 14th). "We are pleased to announce KDG as another NDS customer to benefit from our new patent license agreement with Rovi," Gorm Nielsen, NDS's SVP of business development, said in a prepared statement. "We believe that operators will benefit from the option to license Rovi's EPG patents alongside NDS' own leading technology and service offerings, part of our ongoing effort to help operators and providers bring a richer viewing experience to their audiences." Added Rovi's SVP of licensing, Samir Armaly: "We continue to gain momentum in expanding our patent program worldwide with leading operators. We are pleased to welcome KDG, the leading cable network operator in Germany, to our licensing program. KDG joins our European licensees that include CANAL+, BSkyB, Portugal Telecom, SKY Italia and UPC Broadband."
