Context: Earlier this year, InterDigital started enforcement actions over multimedia patents against The Walt Disney Company (and its Hulu and ESPN+ subsidiaries) in multiple jurisdictions (February 3, 2025 ip fray article). Disney was in the process of leveraging a U.S. FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) action against InterDigital’s patent enforcement, but InterDigital obtained anti-antisuit relief from the Unified Patent Court’s (UPC) Mannheim Local Division (LD) and presumably also the Landgericht MĂĽnchen I (Munich I Regional Court) (May 30, 2025 ip fray article). Two months ago, it became known that InterDigital also won two preliminary injunctions (PI) against Disney in Brazil (September 11, 2025 ip fray article).
What’s new: InterDigital today announced that the Munich I Regional Court has granted the reasearch and licensing company a German injunction against Disney’s streaming services (November 3, 2025 InterDigital press release).
Direct impact: Disney can appeal and seek an enforcement stay, but the hurdle for that is rather high in Germany. FRAND is not going to be a factor here. In the combination of this German injunction and the two Brazilian PIs, a settlement is increasingly likely.
Wider ramifications:
- Amazon apparently expected to find itself in a similar situation as Disney and sought help from the High Court of Justice for England & Wales (EWHC). An antisuit injunction remains in force after last week’s hearing (October 30, 2025 ip fray article), and a UPC anti-interim-license injunction (AILI) hearing will take place next week (November 14, 2025).
- InterDigital continues to report good news to its shareholders (October 31, 2025 ip fray article).
- With so much going on in video-streaming patent litigation, we’ve adjusted our policy and will still make a very large part of our related content available for free, but no longer all of it (November 1, 2025 ip fray article).
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Counsel
Counsel for InterDigital:
- Arnold Ruess’s Cordula Schumacher, Dr. Arno Risse (“Riße” in German), Jan Wergin, Dr. Lisa Rieth, Julija Kravtsova, and Victoria Thuesing (“Thüsing” in German). For a non-exhaustive list of Arnold Ruess’s prior achievements, see the firm’s ip fray profile.
- df-mp patent attorneys David Molnia, Dr. Dominik Ho and Nikola Wiesemann.
Counsel for Disney: Pentarc’s Dr. Dietrich Kamlah and Dr. Christian Lederer, and Zimmermann & Partner patent attorney Dr. Joel Naegerl (“Nägerl” in German).