Video streamers back Tesla against InterDigital, Avanci, as UKSC gears up for end of April pool rate determination hearing 

Context:

• We are currently in the midst of a major wave of video patent litigation. Just yesterday, in a case where Dolby is suing Snapchat operator Snap in the U.S. and Brazil (March 24, 2026 ip fray article), the 1st Business Court of the Rio de Janeiro State Judiciary entered a case management order that amounts to a roadmap to a preliminary injunction (PI), starting with a five-day deadline for the defendant to justify its use of Dolby’s AV1 patents without paying royalties (April 16, 2026 ip fray article). Netflix has also been embroiled in global litigation with DivX and earlier this month achieved a major win in the Central District of California (April 3, 2026 ip fray article), while Nokia won a second pair of HEVC injunctions against Acer and ASUS in the Munich I Regional Court last month (March 26, 2026 ip fray article). Other significant suits include Dolby v. Skyworth (March 24, 2026 ip fray article), Velos v. Disney (March 22, 2026 ip fray article), Huawei v. Meta (March 12, 2026 ip fray article), and Huawei v. Disney (March 10, 2026 ip fray article).
• Perhaps one of the biggest cases, however, is Tesla’s major standard-essential patent (SEP) dispute against InterDigital and Avanci. Last March, the latter won jurisdictional challenges to a claim brought against them by the carmaker over the Avanci pool rate for a one-stop license to the vast majority of 5G SEPs (March 6, 2025 ip fray article). In a major turn of events last July, Tesla successfully persuaded the UK Supreme Court (UKSC) to grant its petition on four out of five grounds of appeal (only the procedural fairness part could not be pursued: July 2, 2025 ip fray article). In a recent opinion piece, ip fray noted that Tesla would be violating the new Chinese regulations (which we also reported on first: April 13, 2026 ip fray article) if it leveraged the English courts against Chinese Avanci licensors (April 14, 2026 ip fray opinion piece).

What’s new and direct impact: As the UKSC gears up to hear Tesla’s case against InterDigital and Avanci from April 27 to April 29, 2026, it has today added the following interveners (April 16, 2026 UKSC Tesla v. InterDigital update to change log):

• The Fair Standards Alliance (FSA)
• ACT | The App Association
• The Motion Picture Association, Inc.
• The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA)
• The International Center for Law & Economics

It is likely that the first four organizations will be backing Tesla in this case, as they have historically been pro-implementer. Big Tech companies (including the likes of Google and Apple) all make up some of the members in the FSA, ACT, and the CCIA. At the end of last year, the ACT, which is funded by Apple, Amazon, and other large tech companies, withdrew its European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) membership application (December 2, 2025 ip fray article). The Motion Picture Association is a trade association that represents the major film studios of the U.S.

Meanwhile, the International Center for Law & Economics will likely be the only organization backing InterDigital and Avanci, given its pro-SEP stance in recent articles it has published (see here: October 7, 2025 ICLE Comments to UK IPO on Standard-Essential Patents).