Overview
Cohen Milstein and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP represent TVision Insights Inc. (“TVision”), a pioneering data and analytics company that develops innovative technologies to measure how viewers watch TV.
Since 2021, The Nielsen Company (US), LLC (“Nielsen”) has sued TVision five times for alleged patent infringement—Nielsen has succeeded on none of its claims to date. On November 10, 2025, TVision filed antitrust counterclaims in the most recent lawsuit, alleging that Nielsen uses a number of anticompetitive tactics to maintain an unlawful monopoly over TV audience measurement services in the United States.
Nielsen maintains approximately 90% of the market share in the market for TV audience measurement services. TVision alleges that Nielsen uses a two-pronged strategy to secure its dominance in the TV audience measurement market.
- First, Nielsen leverages its market power to lock its customers into using Nielsen’s and only Nielsen’s TV audience measurement services. Nielsen does this through a menu of contract practices which include: multi-year, staggered contracts with large networks; provisions prohibiting the use of any Nielsen data they customers already paid for if the contract is not reviewed; and withholding data from networks to advertisers and agencies if contracts are not renewed.
- Second, when a potential competitor emerges, TVision alleges that Nielsen uses its vast resources to bury it under a series of baseless lawsuits that are in part brought through patents fraudulently obtained from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. These lawsuits serve to intimidate, harass, deter, and drain the resources of new competitors.
Case Background
The entertainment industry relies on data about who is watching which programs, when, and where. In order to decide which television shows to renew and which to cancel, understand viewer preferences to develop new programming, and to determine how much to charge for advertising time, content providers (including broadcasters, networks, cable distributors, and streaming providers) require extensive data about their audiences. Likewise, advertisers and advertising agencies need viewership data in order to decide where they will buy advertising and how much they are willing to pay. When a particular metric becomes accepted as a unit of value used by content providers and advertisers to negotiate prices for ad time, that metric is called a “currency” in the industry.
TV audience measurement services are the means by which entertainment industry participants obtain this data. TV audience measurement services are a product whereby a customer pays a monthly subscription fee to receive periodic information about the entertainment landscape, including detailed data on the number of people who watched each show, the demographic and geographic breakdowns of the audiences, and similar information.
But the TV audience measurement services market has very high barriers to entry. This is because the primary method by which companies collect the data underlying TV audience measurement services involves the use of a “panel”—a carefully chosen, demographically representative group of many thousands of individuals who are paid to have devices installed on their televisions to monitor and record their viewing habits. Creating and maintaining a panel is extremely time- and capital-intensive, as it requires locating tens of thousands of participants using a meticulous sampling methodology, regularly paying each of them, and establishing an infrastructure to administer their continuous participation.
Despite these barriers, more sophisticated providers of TV audience measurement services, like TVision, have begun providing more advanced metrics, such as second-by-second measurements of viewers’ eyes-on- screen attention level. Nielsen has responded to TVision’s growing business by filing a series of sham lawsuits to drain its resources and to send a message to other fledgling competitors.
In this lawsuit, TVision seeks not only damages but also equitable relief that would restore competition and prevent the occurrence of future antitrust violations. The relief sought in this case would not only benefit potential competitors like TVision but also all participants in the media ecosystem that rely on accurate data to make strategic business decisions.
Name of case: Nielsen v. TVision, Case No. 1:25-cv-00575-CJB, U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. Counterclaim: TVision v. Nielsen.