BREAKING: UPC grants InterDigital second 11-country injunction against Disney

Context:

• InterDigital is presently enforcing several video streaming patents against Disney in courts in Germany, Brazil, and the UPC.
• The UPC’s Mannheim Local Division (LD) last month granted InterDigital an 11-country injunction against Disney’s streaming services (June 16, 2026 ip fray article), confirming the asserted patent’s validity, and ip fray’s own prediction of the outcome of a trial held in May (May 5, 2026 ip fray article).
• InterDigital also filed two more complaints in the UPC’s Dusseldorf LD over the alleged infringement of EP2449782 (“Methods and apparatus for signaling intra prediction for large blocks for video encoders and decoders”) in February 2025 (UPC_CFI_87/2025) and of EP2080349 (“Sharing multimedia content in a peer-to-peer configuration”) in April 2025 (UPC_CFI_297/2025).

What’s new: InterDigital has won another UPC injunction against Disney over an HEVC encoding patent, spanning 11 EU countries, including France, Germany, and Italy (July 23, 2026 InterDigital press release). The UPC’s Düsseldorf LD handed down the decision today, confirming the validity of the patent-in-suit. A redacted version of the judgment will be publicly available soon.

Direct impact: The judgment, which Disney can appeal, is the second injunction related to encoding for HEVC that InterDigital has received from the UPC against Disney. However, it joins several others from German national courts and Brazil. In February, InterDigital won its third injunction, issued by the Munich I Regional Court, against Disney (February 13, 2026 ip fray article), while it obtained a preliminary injunction over two of its patents by the 7th Corporate Court of the Judicial District of the [State] Capital of Rio de Janeiro last fall (September 11, 2025 ip fray article).

Wider ramifications: While the pendulum continues to swing very much in InterDigital’s favor, there is no sign from Disney of backing down. It will be interesting to see whether Disney pursues any appeals against these recent decisions. In the second UPC Dusseldorf LD case, a decision is due on September 2, 2026, according to a source close to ip fray. In a parallel case involving HEVC encoding patents, InterDigital is dealing with a complex patent litigation situation against Amazon. In June, the company had announced that all litigation would be withdrawn in favor of arbitration (June 11, 2026 ip fray article). The next day, Amazon issued a contradicting statement noting that while the parties were in “negotiations regarding an arbitration process, no agreement ha[d] yet been signed” (June 12, 2026 ip fray article). However, on July 10, the remainder of the pending cases in the UPC were withdrawn/stayed, and the United States District Court for the District of Delaware granted a motion to stay proceedings there as the parties work out the terms of agreement.