Context: Last week, Judge Simone Gastesi Chevrand of the 6th Business Court of Rio de Janeiro granted Huawei an expert report-based preliminary injunction (PI) against Disney over a Brazilian High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) encoding patent, with a R$5 million ($1 million) penalty for non-compliance (October 21, 2026 ip fray article).
What’s new: Disney yesterday filed an interlocutory appeal with the Court of Justice of the State of Rio de Janeiro, asking for the injunction to be suspended while the appeal is pending. In the filing, Disney confirmed that it has completely disabled HEVC on Disney+ in Brazil. As of this morning, there is no ruling on the stay request.
Direct impact: Disney could end the shutdown by taking a license to Huawei’s relevant patents, either bilaterally or through Avanci Video, where Huawei is a licensor. The appeal mostly attacks how the evidence was handled, not the patent itself. If Disney wins, the likelier result is more expert work and a delayed judgment, not the end of the case.
Wider ramifications: Brazil is now another place where Disney responds to an injunction by switching features off. It did the same in Germany (January 23, 2026 ip fray article and July 28, 2026 ip fray article) after several regional court injunctions, and after the UPC’s second InterDigital injunction (August 5, 2026 ip fray article). That strategy now has a price, as Euroconsumers has demanded up to €62.8 million ($73 million) in refunds for European subscribers (October 16, 2026 ip fray article). It argues that subscribers kept paying the full Premium price while 4K, HDR, and Dolby Vision were unavailable, and that Disney kept advertising “4K UHD & HDR”, which Euroconsumers says may mislead consumers under EU law. Brazilian subscribers could start asking similar questions if the shutdown lasts, the same way French consumers did (September 25, 2026 ip fray article). Other rights holders are watching the same court, since Ericsson sued Disney before the 6th Business Court last week (October 15, 2026 ip fray article) and IBEX won its own injunction there last month (September 10, 2026 ip fray article). How the appeals court treats the stay request will show how well these Rio decisions hold up.
Here is a copy of Disney’s interlocutory appeal, in the original Portuguese, filed on October 22, 2026: [Disney’s interlocutory appeal (Portuguese)]
Patent-in-suit
- Brazilian Patent No. BR 112013034060-6 (“methods of encoding and decoding intraframe prediction modes”)
A procedural attack
Disney’s appeal leans heavily on process. It argues that the lower court closed the evidence phase without letting the expert answer Disney’s objections, which Article 477 of the Code of Civil Procedure requires. According to Disney, the expert refused to answer 15 questions on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND), saying they were outside his expertise.
Disney also disputes the finding that it delayed the case, pointing out that Huawei filed 17 briefs against Disney’s six. It claims the court even attributed one of Huawei’s filings to Disney. In its view, the court also ignored its own earlier finding, made when it set the schedule in February, that there was no urgency and that Disney was solvent and able to bear any financial loss.
The essentiality question
Disney claims Huawei contradicted itself. In its reply, Huawei allegedly argued that the patent is essential to H.265/HEVC and asked for that to be treated as an uncontested fact. After the expert report, Huawei reportedly said the patent was not covered by FRAND and that any FRAND debate was dilatory.
Disney also says the expert report itself calls the patent essential, while the injunction treated it as non-essential. It argues that the FRAND question was therefore never properly examined. Disney claims it made a licensing offer for Huawei’s HEVC patents on July 17, 2026, which Huawei refused.
Why Disney switched HEVC off
Disney says it chose complete deactivation “out of an abundance of caution”, at least initially, because the order gave it only 24 hours and carried a single fine of R$5 million. That is more than 16 times the R$300,000 (about $60,000) that Huawei put on the case.
Disney argues that the shutdown is not technically necessary and is not an admission of infringement. It says the expert acknowledged that the patent does not cover the whole HEVC standard, so HEVC could be kept with modifications that disable only certain operations. According to a source close to the matter, Disney’s Brazilian help page on Disney+ pricing also no longer mentions 4K UHD, HDR, or Dolby Vision for the premium plan.
Claim scope and 64×64 blocks
On the merits, Disney focuses on claim 1, which lists block sizes from 4×4 to 64×64. It says the expert accepted that an encoder not using 64×64 blocks would not literally meet the claim, yet still found infringement through an alternative reading. Disney claims its encoders do not use 64×64 blocks.
Disney also argues that encoding happens outside Brazil, so infringement depends on Article 42(II) of the Brazilian IP statute, which covers products obtained directly by a patented process. In its view, the video file streamed in Brazil is not the immediate result of the patented method.
Fallback requests
If the injunction stays, Disney wants it limited to implementations that actually use the patented technology in Brazil. It also asks for at least 15 business days to comply, counted from personal notification, and a daily fine of R$50,000 (about $10,000) instead of the single R$5 million fine. Huawei had originally asked for a daily fine of R$100,000.
Court and counsel
Appeal court: Court of Justice of the State of Rio de Janeiro. Disney asked for the appeal to be assigned to one of its Private Law Chambers.
Lower court: Judge Simone Gastesi Chevrand, 6th Business Court of the Capital District of Rio de Janeiro (case no. 3019978-93.2026.8.19.0001).
Huawei is being represented by Licks Attorneys’ (ip fray firm profile) Felipe Barros Oquendo, Otto Licks, and Pedro Campos, together with Luis Felipe Salomão Filho of SalomãoAdvogados.
Meanwhile, Disney is being represented by RNA Law’s Roberto Rodrigues, Vânia Aieta, Carolina Uzeda, Tatiana Alves, Karlo Tinoco, João Vitor Esteves, Maria Clara Tramontini, and Daniela Fernandes, as well as Bermudes Advogados’ Ricardo Loretti and Antônio Sardenberg Ferraço.