Fighting Over the TV: Quinn Emanuel Helps Defend TVision Against Nielsen

Quinn Emanuel has helped secure a jury verdict of non-infringement for its client, TVision.  After two hours of deliberation, a Delaware jury on June 11 rejected Nielsen’s infringement allegations for U.S. Patent No. 7,783,889, asserted against automatic content recognition technology in TVision’s audience and attention measurement products.   

With co-counsel from Shaw Keller, partner Jared Newton and associate Vanessa Blecher secured the win and showed how Quinn Emanuel can change the game when we are brought into high-stakes patent trials.

Nielsen Targets TVision

For decades, Nielsen operated as the currency in television viewership measurement, leveraging a panel of households to generate ratings. TVision was founded in 2014 to modernize existing measurement techniques through computer-vision technology that captures audience and attention data from its opt-in, nationally representative panel. Second by second, TVision’s technology analyzes whether a viewer is fully engaged in the content, is not looking at the screen, or has left the room. The data gives networks and advertisers better insight into how content is consumed so they can make better programming choices. 

TVision alleges that, in the face of growing competition, Nielsen began to impose contract conditions that prevented customers from leveraging TVision data and coupled those tactics with a series of patent infringement suits. This forced TVision to divert resources and lay off employees, threatening the company’s long-term ambitions.

Quinn Emanuel Steps In  

In 2025, we were engaged by TVision to pursue antitrust counterclaims against Nielsen.  TVision was now on the offensive but still had to defend itself against Nielsen’s patent suits, one of which was set for trial in June. In April, TVision brought in Quinn Emanuel to lead the trial with Shaw Keller. 

Despite being outnumbered and out-resourced, we were able to demonstrate how TVision’s technology is fundamentally different from the asserted patent—eliciting key admissions during cross examination of Nielsen’s technical experts and telling a story of independent development through direct examination of TVision’s key employees. 

In his closing argument, Jared distilled the complex technical issues into terms that made it clear TVision does not infringe, and the asserted patent provides no meaningful benefit in the modern television environment.  Following a short deliberation, the jury agreed—giving TVision an important victory over a larger rival.