Context: Snap Inc., the company behind Snapchat, runs one of the world’s largest video messaging platforms, with users sharing billions of photos and videos daily, most of it compressed using standard video codecs such as HEVC and AV1, yet Snap has not taken a license from Access Advance’s Video Distribution Pool (VDP), the pool that licenses those codecs’ patents to streaming platforms. That gap has drawn a growing line of patent owners to Snap’s door: Dolby, a VDP licensor, opened the fight in March 2026 with AV1 and HEVC infringement suits against Snap in the U.S. and Brazil (March 24, 2026 ip fray article), then added a third Brazilian complaint and amended U.S. pleadings with more HEVC patents a few months later (June 10, 2026 ip fray article), while IBEX PT Holdings filed its own streaming patent suits against Disney and Snap in Brazil (May 22, 2026 ip fray article). Snap pushed back by suing Dolby and Access Advance in the UK High Court over the VDP pool’s licensing terms (July 15, 2026 ip fray article), but that didn’t stop ETRI from filing a U.S. complaint over three more HEVC patents, making it the third VDP-linked licensor to sue Snap after Dolby and M&K Holdings had already brought their own cases at the UPC (July 28, 2026 ip fray article).
What’s new: HFI Innovation Inc., a Taiwan-based subsidiary of chipmaker MediaTek, has sued Snap Inc., Snap Group Limited, and Snap B.V. at the UPC’s Munich Local Division (LD) over EP2742691 (“Method and apparatus of deblocking filter with simplified boundary strength decision”), a video coding patent. The case, received by the court on August 25, 2026, is now the fifth patent infringement suit filed against Snap at the UPC over video codec technology in under three months, following two cases from Dolby, one from M&K Holdings, and one from ETRI. A separate order issued the same day by Judge-rapporteur Dr. Schnurr sealed parts of the statement of claim describing pre-trial licensing talks between Access Advance LLC and the Snap entities, tying the new case to the same licensing ecosystem behind the earlier suits.
Direct impact: Each of the five UPC cases proceeds on its own track, so a settlement or ruling in one does not resolve the others unless a pool license is taken. But the cumulative effect is that Snap can no longer treat any single lawsuit as an isolated dispute; it must now defend, in parallel, against four different patent owners over technology that sits at the core of how Snapchat delivers video. With a confidentiality order already covering licensing correspondence between Access Advance and Snap in the HFI case, it looks like Snap has been in some kind of dialogue with the pool administrator even as the litigation list keeps growing.
Wider ramifications: Snap’s video codec troubles are no longer confined to one courtroom or one licensor. Between the UPC, U.S. district courts, Brazilian state courts, and now a UK counterattack of its own, Snap is fighting on at least four fronts at once, a pattern that mirrors the kind of multi-front pressure other unlicensed implementers, including vehicle makers and set-top box vendors, have faced from Access Advance’s pools in the past. If Snap does not reach a broad license soon, whether bilateral or through the VDP pool, more licensors may simply add their own patents to what is quickly becoming one of the most crowded dockets any single defendant has faced at the UPC.
Five suits, four plaintiffs, one defendant
The UPC docket against Snap has filled up fast. Dolby filed the first two cases at the Munich LD on June 15, 2026, over EP2636218 (“Picture coding supporting block merging and skip mode”), and EP2721822 (“Entropy coding of motion vector differences”). Both patents are HEVC patents listed in the VDP pool.
M&K Holdings Inc., itself a VDP licensor, followed on July 28, 2026, also at the Munich LD, with a suit over EP3125555 (“Method for Restoring an Intra Prediction Mode”). M&K is represented by Tilman Mueller, who also represents Dolby in its UPC cases against Snap, a detail that points to some coordination among the VDP licensors going after Snap.
Two days later, on July 30, 2026, ETRI brought its own UPC case, but at the Mannheim LD rather than Munich, over EP3614668 (“Video Decoding Method”). That filing came just three days after ETRI had already sued Snap in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware over three other HEVC patents.
HFI Innovation’s case, filed August 25, 2026, and covering EP2742691, is the newest addition and the first one brought by an entity outside the group of licensors that had previously been named as VDP participants in ip fray’s reporting (July 28, 2026 ip fray article). Whether HFI’s patent is formally part of the VDP pool has not been confirmed, though the confidentiality order issued alongside the new suit does reference licensing negotiations involving Access Advance and Snap.
A confidentiality order with a telling detail
The order accompanying HFI’s new suit is, on its face, a routine confidentiality ruling under Rule 262A of the UPC’s Rules of Procedure (RoP). It classifies as confidential the exhibits attached to HFI’s statement of claim that describe pre-trial licensing negotiations between Access Advance LLC and the three Snap defendants. The court gave Snap’s representatives two weeks to comment on the confidentiality designation once they have had a chance to review the statement of claim, and it capped potential fines for breaching the confidentiality obligation at €100K. Access for Snap’s registered representatives to the sealed material was granted immediately.
What makes the order notable is not its mechanics but what it confirms: that Access Advance and Snap have been talking, in some form, about a license covering at least part of the patent portfolio now being asserted against Snap in five separate UPC cases. Whether those talks touch on HFI’s patent specifically, or on a broader package, is not something the public record currently answers.
The Brazilian and U.S. side of the fight
Snap’s video codec exposure is not limited to the UPC. Dolby’s original March 2026 complaints in the U.S. and Brazil accused Snap of infringing AV1 and HEVC patents, marking the first AV1 assertion by an Access Advance licensor and the first AV1 case against a streaming platform. A Brazilian judge gave Snap five days to justify its use of Dolby’s AV1 patents that April, and Dolby doubled down in June with a third Brazilian complaint and amended U.S. pleadings adding more HEVC patents. IBEX PT Holdings brought its own Brazilian suits against both Disney and Snap in May, seeking damages over separate streaming patents. ETRI’s Delaware complaint, filed in late July, added three more HEVC patents to Snap’s U.S. exposure, on top of the cases already pending there.
Snap, for its part, has not simply absorbed the litigation. In July, it sued both Dolby and Access Advance in the UK High Court, in a case docketed as HP-2026-000026, asking the court to weigh in on the fairness of the VDP pool’s licensing terms rather than the individual patents.
Court and counsel
UPC Munich Local Division (Panel 1b): Judge-rapporteur Dr. Ina Schnurr.
Counsel for HFI Innovation: BARDEHLE PAGENBERG’s Dr. Tilman Müller and Dr. Volkmar Henke.
Counsel for M&K Holdings (in its own UPC case against Snap): Dr. Tilman Mueller.