This is a second follow-up to the Monday news of Amazon having obtained what the High Court of Justice for England & Wales (EWHC) called an anti-antisuit injunction (AASI) (October 20, 2025 ip fray article). That report was based on the operative order, and the reasons became available yesterday, which led to our first follow-up (October 21, 2025 ip fray article). What’s striking is that Mr Justice Meade continues to defend his view that Amazon could not realistically have obtained an ex parte AASI, saying that things have changed now because of the Unified Patent Court’s (UPC) and Munich I Regional Court’s anti-interim-license injunctions (AILIs), which InterDigital sought, and the courts granted, ex parte. The question of whether InterDigital and the non.UK courts might do it was answered a long time ago, however: Amazon could always have pointed to InterDigital’s past ex parte AASIs going back to 2021, with one being as recent as May 2025.
There is, however, something more to explain:
What really is the scope? Is InterDigital’s AILIs also AFLIs (anti-final-license injunctions)? And is Amazon’s UK injunction an AASI/AAAASI or an AAASI/AAAAASI if one considers an interim license an antisuit injunction, or an anti-anti-final-license injunction (AAFLI)? And if you feel those are too many latters per acronym,
When major events happen in patent litigation, the picture sometimes becomes clearer only when more pieces of the puzzle become available.
Florian Mueller
ip fray is committed to speed and accuracy, and must balance the two in such situations, given that our demanding audience wants everything to be correct and available instantaneously. The solution is incremental coverage and commentary. Situations where two follow-ups are warranted are rare, but we “live in interesting times.” We may also do a follow-up article to last night’s LinkedIn post on the UPC’s latest Edwards v. Meril decision, which deviates from the problem-solution approach.
Breadth of UPC and Munich AILIs
First, no matter what InterDigital’s UK counsel said in the procedural discussions there, it is hard to see how Amazon could obtain an interim-license declaration without at least a serious risk of running afoul of the UPC and (even more so) Munich AILIs. If InterDigital enforced those AILIs (October 2, 2025 ip fray article) against Amazon’s pursuit or enforcement of a final (i.e., post-trial) specific-performance injunction requiring InterDigital to grant a license on UK court-determined terms, the AILIs would have to be interpreted (at least in Munich) in accordance with the doctrine of “kerngleicher Verstoß” (violation sharing the identical core). The AILIs are based on self-defense against foreign interference with intellectual property rights (treated as fundamental rights). There is no reason why a post-trial UK injunction ordering InterDigital to grant a license could be reconciled with the UPC and Munich AILIs. If anything, it makes things even worse if the coercive license is not just temporary. It’s about coercion, not about time limitations.
In Germany, the case law on “kerngleicher Verstoß” is pretty well developed. The UPC may adopt a similar stance, but it’s a young jurisdiction, so it remains to be seen.
For Amazon that created a tricky situation, and that explains why there is now some confusion about what certain terms really mean. On the one hand, Amazon wants to be able to argue in the UPC and Germany that it is not violating the prophylactic part of the AILIs by forcing InterDigital to withdraw the AILIs. On the other hand, Amazon wanted the UK court to see at least a risk of InterDigital obtaining analogous decisions against a post-trial specific-performance injunction, and Mr Justice Meade’s reasons show that he was not convinced that InterDigital would never interpret the AILIs as also applying to post-trial specific-performance injunctions.
A term many patent practitioners know is “broadest reasonable interpretation” (BRI). It is not an unreasonably broad interpretation to interpret the AILIs from a “kerngleicher Verstoß” angle.
Breadth of UK injunction
The next question of interpretation is whether the UK injunction is absolutely limited to the scenario of InterDigital seeking a new injunction (from the UPC and/or the Munich court and/or elsewhere) for the purpose of preventing Amazon from seeking a post-trial specific-performance injunction.
The UK injunction refers to Final Relief, by which a post-trial specific-performance injunction is meant, but also to any part thereof. The plain language of the operative order does not rule out that the UK injunction could also be used against InterDigital in connection with the UPC and Munich AILIs.
The written reasons, which became available a day later, still do not render that interpretation unreasonably broad. There is nothing in those written reasons that explicitly says “any part thereof” does not mean interim licenses. However, while the most reasonable interpretation of (at least) the Munich AILI is that it would be infringed by (at least the enforcement of a post-trial specific-performance injunction under a “kerngleicher Verstoß” theory, Mr Justice Meade’s written reasons clearly emphasize the mere protection of a post-trial specific-performance injunction because that is what Amazon was seeking and, at this point, Amazon is apparently complying with the AILIs in connection with the pursuit of an interim license, as opposed to trying to force InterDigital to withdraw the AILIs. Amazon’s plan is centered around a fast track to trial in the UK, and then enforcing a specific-performance injunction.
Mr Justice Meade’s written reasons explain why he ultimately decided not to include a paragraph in the operative order that would explicitly authorize patent enforcement (called “substantive” enforcement). He felt that such clarification would do more harm than good. He felt that the wording, as it stands, was clearer about not relating to injunctions against patent infringement than if there was a clarification that could give rise to more doubt than it would eliminate. That is interesting in its own right, but the fact that this question had to be addressed at all shows that the scope of that UK injunction could be wider in some ways than what Amazon explicitly requested.
What is or is not an ASI?
In this context, InterDigital, like some other SEP holders, and the courts that granted the AILIs presumably consider an interim license to be an ASI by any other name. That is why the same logic known from the AASI context was applied. Amazon would probably disagree and say that an interim-license declaration is just a declaration. The pro-AILI perspective is, however, that it triggers a defensive mechanism.
That self-defense mechanism is not an ASI. German courts do not have authority to grant ASIs, and AASIs (or AILIs) work around that problem by focusing on the protection of fundamental rights and self-defense. However, as Amazon’s request for an AASI and the UK court’s adoption of the term show, the Amazon/UK perspective is that an AILI or an anti-final-license injunction are ASIs.
The UK injunction is best described as an AASI+AAASI+AAAASI+AAAAASI
In this situation, which has a couple of Schroedinger’s cat-like elements, it turns out that the UK injunction is even more than an AAASI+AAAAASI (A3SI+A5SI).
It is an AASI because it is meant ot protect against what, from the UK-Amazon perspective, constitutes an ASI: a new injunction from outside the UK that would prevent Amazon from obtaining a license on UK court-ordered terms with some sort of pressure (even if just that InterDigital would be deemed out of compliance with FRAND).
It is an AAASI because, as Mr Justice Meade’s written reasons make clear, there is fear that the AILIs could be used against a post-trial specific-performance injunction. If one combines that UK view with the UPC/German view that AILIs are effectively AASIs, then that means it is (not exclusively, but also) an AAASI. It is then not even necessary to argue that it’s also an AAASI because, at least potentially, the UK injunction could also be used to ensure Amazon’s access to an interim license. That question is academic now until Amazon surprisingly changes its stance. For now it is complying.
Then there is also a protective mechanism built into the UK injunction so that InterDigital can’t use foreign injunctions against the UK injunction.To protect an AASI, you need an AAAASI, and to protect an AAASI, you need an AAAAASI. For protection you always have to add two more anti’s.
With the UK hearing coming up next week and the UPC Mannheim LD hearing 15 days later, there will be more to talk about. We are going to follow this process, but it’s important to bear in mind that whatever is entertaining or intellectually fascinating may still not be objectively desirable.