Context: Luxembourg-based RTL Group is a media conglomerate that chiefly operates in Germany, France, Hungary, and Spain. It owns over 52 television channels, 37 radio stations, and six major streaming platforms. In Germany, its channels dominate the market, holding between 25 and 28% of its key target group shares. In November 2025, RTL Group filed a revocation action in the Paris seat of the Unified Patent Court’s (UPC) Central Division (CD) over Huawei’s MPEG-DASH patent EP2945339 (“Method and device for regulating streaming media data transmission”: Section 7.2 of our March 1, 2026 UPC Roundup). In its action, the company also requested access to case files in Nokia v. Amazon from May 2024 to mitigate any potential infringement risks for its streaming media business.
What’s new: Huawei has now filed an infringement action against RTL in the UPC’s Mannheim Local Division (LD) over another MPEG DASH patent, EP2493191 (“Method, device and system for realizing hierarchically requesting content in http streaming system”). The action was filed on April 15, 2026 but made public today.
Direct impact: Infringement lawsuits are the common response to revocation actions. As Huawei is a key contributor to the Avanci Video platform, one option for RTL could be for it to take an Avanci Video streaming license. Avanci in February announced the licensing rates for Avanci Video and confirmed that one licensee had joined the platform (February 5, 2026 ip fray article).
Wider ramifications: Huawei is among several Avanci Video licensors also currently suing Disney over video patents (although not the same one asserted against RTL). In December, ip fray discovered that both Sharp and Huawei are suing Disney in the Munich I Regional Court (December 19, 2025 ip fray article), while in January we found that Huawei had expanded its campaign to the UPC (March 10, 2026 ip fray article). In March, licensing firm Velos Media also sued Disney in the United States District Court for the Central District of California (March 22, 2026 ip fray article). Disney has already been sued multiple times at the UPC, including by Adeia in the Hague LD (LD: November 22, 2024 ip fray article) and InterDigital in the Mannheim LD. While it successfully settled with Adeia in December (December 22, 2025 ip fray article), it was hit with injunctions in its case against InterDigital in parallel actions in Germany and Brazil (February 13, 2026 ip fray article), forcing Disney to remove Dolby Vision and HDR10+ features for Disney+ subscribers across Europe (January 23, 2026 ip fray article). An oral hearing in the UPC prong of that case is set to be held from tomorrow (May 5, 2026) until the day after (April 24, 2026 ip fray article).
RTL Group’s paid subscribers totaled 8.1 million in 2025 (up by 19% from the year before). Its flagship products include RTL+ and M6+. They both have video-on-demand and advertising video-on-demand subscriptions.
Huawei’s asserted patent
The patent Huawei has filed an infringement action over essentially seeks to make internet video streaming smoother through a “hierarchy” of requests. Without this technology, videos we consume on the internet would constantly buffer. The patent fixes this issue by using a hierarchical requesting method, where the device first asks a local cache server for information, then – if this is not possible – asks a higher-level server.
Court and counsel
Infringement action
Panel: Presiding Judge Prof. Peter Tochtermann, Judge Sender Tobias, and Judge Goda Ambrasaité-Balyniené (Stockholm, Sweden).
Huawei is being represented by Bardehle Pagenberg’s (ip fray law firm profile) Volkmar Henke.
Revocation action
Panel: Presiding Judge Tatyana Zhilova, Judge Vincenzo Carnì, and Technically Qualified Judge Eric Augarde.
RTL is being represented by Kiani & Springorum’s Harald Springorum.
Meanwhile, Huawei is being represented by df-mp’s (ip fray law firm profile) Dominik Ho.