The ghost of Quibi is giving up the Turnstyle rotating video tech that let users watch its short-form content in either landscape or portrait mode on phones. A company called Eko filed a lawsuit over the feature a month before Quibi's ill-fated launch. Eko accused Quibi of patent infringement and claimed it used stolen trade secrets to build the tech.
The companies have settled their legal claims against each other, and Quibi is transferring the Turnstyle tech and intellectual property to Eko. The financial terms of their settlement haven't been disclosed, as Variety notes. Eko sought over $100 million in damages from Quibi.
“We are satisfied with the outcome of this litigation, and proud of the independently created contributions of Quibi and its engineering team to content presentation technology,” Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg said.
Eko filed its suit in March 2020. That July, a court ruled that Quibi could keep using Turnstyle pending the outcome of the lawsuit. As it turns out, the case lasted far longer than Quibi's streaming service — the app shut down last December, less than eight months after it debuted.
Quibi sold its content library to Roku, which won an Emmy for one of those series this past weekend. After selling its shows, a Quibi holding company called QBI Holdings was formed as the legal battle played out.
The settlement is another nail in the coffin for a big, expensive, failure of a bet on mobile streaming. Quibi was designed for on-the-go viewing, but it launched in the midst of a pandemic, when most people weren't moving around. Still, at least we'll always have memories of "The Golden Arm."