Context: In the video patent licensing dispute between Amazon and InterDigital, the former was in the process of seeking an interim license in the UK, which was 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 (October 3, 2025 ip fray article). Amazon then obtained an antisuit injunction from the High Court of Justice for England & Wales (EWHC), the scope of which was not clear initially and may still be interpreted differently (October 22, 2025 ip fray article).
What’s new & direct impact: Mr Justice Meade of the EWHC held a hearing today to discuss both Amazon’s request to expedite the UK FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) trial and his ex parte antisuit injunction. The hearing is still ongoing, but the following pieces of information are worth sharing immediately with the standard-essential patent (SEP) ecosystem:
- The UK antisuit injunction remains in force and effect for the time being. It is (unsurprisingly) not lifted. Mr Justice Meade would like the parties to agree on some wording for the next phase.
- Like in its (settled) dispute with Nokia (February 11, 2025 ip fray article), Amazon is seeking a court-ordered license not only for SEPs but also for non-SEPs, arguing that those were part of the usual package. However, no court in the world has so far actually obligated a SEP holder to provide a license to non-SEPs only because they are commonly licensed together with SEPs. And InterDigital’s position is that there is no duty to grant a license here (only a duty of negotiating in good faith).
- The SEP/non-SEP distinction is particularly important in connection with video-streaming patents, given that the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) FRAND pledge (actually RAND, but we use the term FRAND because the absence or presence of the F is devoid of meaning) relates, according to video patent holders and a preliminary United States International Trade Commission (USITC or ITC) decision, only to decoding and not to encoding claims.
- Mr Justice Meade accepted Amazon’s argument that due to the AILIs there was a need for an expedited FRAND proceedings in the UK so as to get to a trial and subsequently a non-interim decision as soon as possible.
- Counsel for Amazon mentioned ip fray twice. 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. InterDigital has been ordered to tell the UK court by Monday, exhaustively, what it will do in the further UPC proceedings, and InterDigital will be expected not to go beyond. In that context, a lawyer representing Amazon mentioned a request for information that the Mannheim LD’s Presiding Judge Prof. Peter Tochtermann sent to the parties after reading about the recent UK antisuit injunction on this website. Interestingly, this mirrors what previously happened in the UK, where Mr Justice Meade summoned the parties to a hearing after learning of the UPC and Munich AILIs here (October 14, 2025 ip fray article).