InterDigital secures second European injunction against Disney in HEVC patent dispute

This ruling significantly raises the legal pressure on Disney to settle its long-standing licensing dispute with InterDigital, as European injunctions now threaten its ability to deliver high-quality streaming without infringing. Because HEVC is the standard for 4K and efficient HD streaming, constant litigation creates a precarious technical environment for Disney+ in key international markets. For the broader industry, this reaffirms the Unified Patent Court's role as a potent tool for patent holders to gain regional leverage in a single judgment. Investors should monitor Disney's upcoming legal response or potential licensing settlement terms, as previous disputes have led to the removal of premium features like Dolby Vision in certain regions.

The July 2026 ruling comes amid an aggressive global licensing push by InterDigital targeting the world’s largest streaming providers. In June 2026, InterDigital secured a new patent license agreement with Amazon, covering Prime Video, after entering binding arbitration to resolve pending litigation (per StockTitan, June 2026). While Amazon chose a path toward settlement, the litigation disclosed that InterDigital had previously sought approximately $200 million per year from Amazon in video streaming patent royalties, according to reports from High Court proceedings in the UK (per ip fray, February 2026).

Disney’s legal challenges extend beyond HEVC encoding. In March 2026, the company was also hit with a patent suit from Huawei in the Unified Patent Court regarding coeffecient coding techniques related to the HEVC and H.264 standards (per Substack, March 2026). Earlier injunctions in Germany and Brazil have already forced Disney to remove certain premium features, including Dolby Vision and HDR10+ support, for Disney+ subscribers in multiple European countries to avoid further infringement (per Substack, March 2026). This technical degradation underscores the real-world impact of patent holdups on streaming quality.

In the courtroom, Disney’s defense strategies have so far failed to gain traction within the European patent system. In a separate June 2026 ruling by the UPC’s Mannheim Local Division, Disney’s fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing defense was rejected because the company reportedly refused to allow InterDigital to present the full record of their negotiations to the court (per eplaw, June 2026). Combined with the most recent Düsseldorf decision, these losses suggest a narrowing legal path for streamers attempting to bypass direct licensing for standardized video codecs.