I just listened to large parts of patent licensing and research firm InterDigital's investor conference call for Q2 and looked at its related SEC filings.
InterDigital CEO Liren Chen mentioned a new license agreement with Amazon. I'll try to find out more about its scope. What was said on the call is that it's a multi-year, worldwide license agreement "covering a range of Amazon’s consumer electronic devices."
It was confirmed that InterDigital's license agreement with Apple--which was apparently last renewed in 2016 (see this Reuters article)--will expire by the end of this quarter, and that the agreement with Samsung will expire by the end of the following quarter (i.e., by the end of the year). Apple has been a licensee to InterDigital's patents since the launch of the first iPhone in 2007Samsung has been an InterDigital license for about 25 years.
There are currently two significant patent assertion efforts by InterDigital: they sued OPPO in late December (according to InterDigital, the annual device volume there amounts to approximately 200 million units including OPPO's affiliates), and they are awaiting a UK ruling in a Lenovo FRAND case.
The last major litigation that was settled (almost precisely a year ago) targeted Xiaomi.
