Context: HP and TCL settled their disputes over HEVC (H.265) video codec patents through an Access Advance pool license last fall (part 2 of an October 30, 2024 ip fray article). Certain cases related to those disputes were pending in the Unified Patent Court (UPC). But certain cases brought by Access Advance licensors Dolby and Sun Patent Trust against Roku remained pending. On December 31, 2024, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts received a complaint by Roku against pool administrator Access Advance and the two licensors suing Roku. Foreign FRAND actions designed to interfere, through antisuit injunctions (ASIs), with enforcement actions in the UPC, German and certain other national courts sometimes give rise to anti-antisuit injunctions (AASIs). The UPC’s Munich LD granted two AASIs in December 2024, one in Avago (Broadcom) v. Realtek (January 16, 2025 ip fray article) and one in Huawei v. Netgear (December 27, 2024 ip fray article).
What’s new: The UPC’s Munich Local Division (LD) has entered AASIs now for Dolby and Sun Patent Trust against Roku. The case numbers for the AASI proceedings are ACT_3832/2025 (Dolby) and ACT_3835/2025 (Sun Patent Trust). The AASI requests were filed on February 23, 2025.
Direct impact: Roku may try to get the AASIs overturned. Unless Dolby and/or Sun Patent Trust win a patent injunction against Roku that results in a near-term settlement, there is a possibility of this matter reaching the UPC’s Court of Appeal (CoA), which did not happen in the two above-mentioned AASI cases that have since been settled.
Wider ramifications: Compared to our January 11, 2025 article on recent unsuccessful attempts to derail UPC and German proceedings by means of U.S. AASIs, the number of failures has doubled. It was only after the article that we found out the earlier Munich AASI (of which we were aware in principle) had come down in Avago v. Realtek, and now there are two parallel AASIs against Roku.
The UPC’s case registry displays the two new AASIs in the same format as the ones that Huawei and Avago (Broadcom) had won. At this point, the UPC is known to have granted four AASIs, and all those decisions were made by the Munich LD.
The panel is the same for both cases: Presiding Judge Ulrike Voss (“Voß” in German), Judge Dr. Daniel Voss (“Voß” in German) and Judge Edger Brinkman (The Hague, Netherlands).
Counsel for plaintiffs: according to the registry, Bardehle Pagenberg’s Dr. Volkmar Henke. In all German and UPC cases involving Access Advance in recent years, plaintiffs’ co-lead counsel has been Dr. Tilman Mueller (“Müller” in German).
Counsel for defendants (in the infringement proceedings): Vossius & Partner’s (Vossius & Brinkhof UPC Litigators’) Dr. Andreas Kramer.