Context:
- InterDigital and Disney have been fighting over video codec standard-essential patents (SEPs) since February 2025 (February 3, 2025 ip fray article).
- The Munich I Regional Court handed InterDigital three separate injunctions against Disney over patents covering the overlay of a second video stream, such as subtitles, high dynamic range (HDR) (November 21, 2025 ip fray article), and HEVC encoding (February 13, 2026 ip fray article).
- The UPC Düsseldorf Local Division (LD) added a fourth injunction in July, covering 11 countries and requiring Disney to recall the infringing HEVC technology (July 23, 2026 ip fray article).
- Disney reacted by switching off premium video features for its German customers, then partly restored 4K streaming in early August using VP9 as an alternative to HEVC, though HDR support remained unavailable and concerns lingered over whether VP9 itself was clean of InterDigital’s patents (August 5, 2026 ip fray article).
- Last month, InterDigital also targeted Disney’s use of VP9 (August 24, 2026 ip fray article).
What’s new: InterDigital has confirmed the filing of a €101.7M ($118M) damages lawsuit against Disney, following up on the November 2025 judgment over EP2132923 (“Methods and systems for displays with chromatic correction with differing chromatic ranges”). Under German case law, damages claims can go back more than far enough to cover the entire period from the launch of Disney+ in Germany in the spring of 2020 (hifi.de article (in German)) until the November 2025 judgment, shortly after which Disney made technical changes in an effort to avoid further infringement.
Direct impact & wider ramifications: Germany is not known for patent damages verdicts in the hundred-million range, but there are two factors in place that could lead to a substantial award in this case. InterDigital confirms that the damages are not limited to German subscribers. Disney is known to serve customers in other European countries out of Germany. And the Munich I Regional Court handed down an unrelated damages judgment a few months ago (April 26, 2026 ip fray article) that laid out criteria for calculating damages, some of which could support InterDigital’s claim in this case. However, Disney would be certain to appeal a substantial damages award to the Munich Higher Regional Court.
We are witnessing the diversification of InterDigital’s video patent enforcement campaign against Disney through a mix of cases that target different standards, partly also assert implementation patents covering non-standardized technologies, and pursuing injunctions as well as damages.
When evaluating any licensing offers from InterDigital, Disney will have to look at the overall business risk. The damages amount in question is not crippling, but it is significant considering that it covers just one patent. And if InterDigital also obtains injunctions related to VP9, Disney will start to run out of workaround options.