Context: In a video patent licensing dispute between Amazon and InterDigital, the former sought an interim license in the UK, which was then countered by InterDigital obtaining anti-interim-license injunctions (AILIs) from the Unified Patent Court’s (UPC) Mannheim Local Division (LD) and the Munich I Regional Court last month (October 3, 2025 ip fray article). Amazon then obtained an antisuit injunction from the High Court of Justice for England & Wales (EWHC) (October 22, 2025 ip fray article), and during a hearing, Mr Justice Meade heard Amazon’s request to expedite the UK FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) trial and his ex parte antisuit injunction (October 30, 2025 ip fray article). That hearing revealed Mr Justice Meade is interested in, and actually appears somewhat wary of, what might happen at the November 14, 2025 UPC Mannheim LD hearing further to the ex parte AILI, which is scheduled for this Friday (October 21, 2025 ip fray article).
What’s new: InterDigital has sued Amazon over the alleged ongoing infringement of 10 of its patents related to the compression of video content and improving picture quality through high dynamic range (HDR) technology (November 10, 2025 InterDigital press release). The suits have been filed in the UPC’s Mannheim LD, the Munich I Regional Court, the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, and the Rio de Janeiro State Court. InterDigital alleges that Amazon has infringed its patents through devices including FireTV and Kindle, and through its services such as Prime Video.
Direct impact: When the UPC’s Mannheim LD and the Munich I Regional Court granted InterDigital’s AILIs against Amazon last month, this was before the company had filed any infringement suits (October 2, 2025 ip fray article). But these actions now make the case more concrete, as Amazon can no longer argue that there is no need to get the AILIs because InterDigital is not enforcing. While Amazon may have hoped that a pre-emptive strike in the UK could help it obtain a settlement deal with InterDigital on favorable terms, the new actions filed today show that the parties are nowhere near an agreement.
Wider ramifications: This adds to InterDigital’s growing docket of global standard-essential patent (SEP) enforcement campaigns. Last month, the company announced it sued Chinese mobile phone maker Transsion in India, the UPC, and Brazil over cellular SEPs and patents related to video coding and video technologies (October 31, 2025 ip fray article). InterDigital is also currently embroiled in litigation with Disney in the U.S., UPC, Germany, and Brazil over multimedia SEPs (February 3, 2025 ip fray article) – a case in which the United States Department of Justice filed a statement of interest (the equivalent of a governmental amicus curiae brief) earlier this month (October 7, 2025 ip fray article).
The patents-in-suit and the venues in which they have been asserted include:
- UPC Mannheim LD
- Munich I Regional Court
- EP2875487 (“Method and device for converting an image sequence whose luminance values belong to a span of values with large dynamic range”)
- District of Delaware
- U.S. Patent No. 10,741,211 (“Information processing device, information recording medium, and information processing method”)
- U.S. Patent No. 9,747,674 (“Method and device for converting an image sequence whose luminance values belong to a high dynamic range”)
- U.S. Patent No. 8,363,724 (“Methods and apparatus using virtual reference pictures”)
- U.S. Patent No. 8,681,855 (“Method and apparatus for video encoding and decoding geometrically partitioned bi-predictive mode partitions”)
- U.S. Patent No. 11,917,146 (“Methods and apparatus for picture encoding and decoding”)
- Rio de Janeiro State Court
- BRPI0305519 (“Additional weighting of reference images in video encoding”)
- BRPI0318825 (“Method of encoding video signal data for an image block”)
This is a copy of the U.S. complaint:
In a statement today, InterDigital’s Chief Legal Officer, Josh Schmidt, said the company’s preference is always to sign licenses through amicable negotiation:
“But Amazon’s decision to initiate litigation against InterDigital earlier this year shows Amazon is more interested in litigating than negotiating.”
Mr. Schmidt added that the “incredible breadth” of InterDigital’s research enables Amazon to efficiently deliver high-quality content to consumers and its customers around the world. “We are committed to receiving fair compensation for our groundbreaking research, which will allow us to continue to invest in the next generation of technology,” he noted.
Counsel
UPC
InterDigital is being represented by Arnold Ruess’s Cordula Schumacher, Dr. Arno Risse (“Riße” in German; he masterminded the 2019 AASI against Continental), Dr. Lisa Rieth, Anja Penners, and Julija Kravtsova. For a non-exhaustive list of Arnold Ruess’s achievements, see the firm’s ip fray profile. On the UPC and German InterDigital v. Amazon cases, they are working together with df-mp patent attorneys Nikola Wiesemann, Dr. Dominik Ho, David Molnia, and Alexandre Hoffmann.
U.S.
InterDigital is being represented by Farnan LLP’s Brian E. Farnan and Michael J. Farnan, as well as McKool Smith’s Richard A. Kamprath, Casey L. Shomaker, Gabriel DeJong, Joshua Budwin, George Fishback, Kevin Burgess, and Kaylee E. Hoffner.
Brazil
InterDigital is being represented by Licks Attorneys’ Carlos Aboim, Rodolfo Barreto and Bruno Falque; and Salomão Advogados’ Paulo Salomão and Luis Felipe Salomão.