The United States Patent and Trademark Office announced in September that LG Electronics sold 298 video codec-related patents registered in the U.S. to Nokia in June this year.

These patents are all standard-essential patents, identical in type to the 59 patents LG sold to Xiaomi in January. Codecs compress and decompress video, or encode and decode it, enabling playback on smartphones and televisions.

Nokia exited the mobile phone business in 2014. Of its €19.2 billion total revenue last year, €15.1 billion came from telecommunications equipment, with an additional €1.9 billion from patent licensing fees.

To date, LG Electronics has sold the majority of its U.S. patents to multiple Chinese smartphone manufacturers. Between 2023 and 2024, LG sold 55 patents to OPPO. In early 2024, it sold 14 patents to TCL, followed by 47 patents to vivo later that year.

Sources indicate LG Electronics held approximately 24,000 standard patents when it concluded its mobile phone operations in 2021. Given this substantial portfolio, the company reportedly sells patents only in small batches—likely due to the requirement for Korean government approval for such transactions.

However, LG Electronics also registered as a patent licensing company in 2022 and generated 89 billion won in profit from this business that same year. It is believed LG Electronics has licensed its patents to Apple and another unnamed company.