Context:
- Certain Access Advance licensors have been enforcing their High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC, or H.265) patents against Roku since June 2024, but no license agreement has been reached yet. Three strikes neutralized Roku’s U.S. FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) action in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts: anti-antisuit injunctions (AASIs) by the Unified Patent Court’s (UPC) Munich Local Division (LD) (March 5, 2025 ip fray article), and the dismissal of Roku’s claims against Access Advance licensors Dolby and Sun Patent Trust (SPT) (July 22, 2025 ip fray article) as well as against Access Advance itself (July 28, 2025 ip fray article).
- Thus far, the only jurisdictions in which courts are known to have granted preliminary injunctions (PIs) over standard-essential patents (SEPs) are Brazil (July 12, 2025 ip fray article) and Colombia (WIPO summary). In the U.S. it’s generally difficult to win patent PIs. In Europe it’s not that hard, but so far the assumption has been that FRAND issues would dissuade courts from granting injunctive relief on the fast track.
What’s new:
- A spokeswoman for the Landgericht München I (Munich I Regional Court) has confirmed the pendency of a PI motion by Dolby against Roku. It was filed on June 27, 2025. The case number is 21 O 8296/25 (21st Civil Chamber: Presiding Judge Dr. Georg Werner), and the patent-in-suit is EP2777270 (“Procedure for coding and decoding of images, apparatus for coding and decoding and corresponding computer programs”).
- The spokeswoman furthermore confirmed that a trial has been scheduled for January 28, 2026 in case no. 21 O 15699/24 (same division), Philips v. Roku. The patent-in-suit is EP2950543 (“Adaptive coding of the prediction error in hybrid video coding”).
- Meanwhile, we cannot see any progress with the UPC actions that Dolby and SPT brought last year, other than the above-mentioned AASIs. Not even an interim conference appears to have been scheduled. It appears that the twelve-month target (for the time from filing to hearing) is now beyond unrealistic in the Munich LD, potentially making it a victim of its own popularity.
Direct impact: The combination of the PI motion, the reasonably near-term trial date (within 13-14 months of filing) in the Munich I Regional Court and the failure of its Massachusetts action may persuade Roku to take a license. Should Philips obtain a SEP-based PI, it would be the first one outside of Brazil and Colombia. ip fray stated earlier this year that courts outside the UK may want to thwart requests for interim licenses by ordering SEP-based PIs (even ex parte, i.e., without hearing the other party), deeming an implementer an unwilling licensee if it engages in maneuvers to undermine enforcement actions in European and other jurisdictions through foreign interference (February 4, 2025 ip fray article). It cannot be ruled out that the situation in Philips v. Roku is such that the court can resolve FRAND in a PI proceeding
Wider ramifications: If fast-moving proceedings in the Munich I Regional Court triggered a settlement, the UPC would not have contributed to that outcome, though it has brought about numerous other settlements. The UPC has a serious Munich LD overload problem on its hand. It needs to be addressed by the court as well as litigants.
Access Advance’s licensing terms are usually accepted by implementers. Compared to the number of amicable license agreements, litigation is rare. Roku, however, is regularly on the receiving end of SEP enforcement.
When we became aware of the PI motion. which has the potential to make SEP litigation history (at least for Europe, or more generally, the non-LatAm parts of the world), we also looked into the status of other cases. Going from a December 2024 filing to a January 2026 trial is not a new speed record for the Munich I Regional Court, but compared to the situation in the related UPC cases, it is lightning-fast. The same court’s 7th Civil Chamber (Presiding Judge: Dr. Oliver Schoen (“Schön” in German)) tends to move even faster.
The percentage of UPC complaints filed with the four German divisions, and particularly the Munich LD, runs counter to the vision and notion of a Europe-wide patent judiciary, and is simply too much to digest. The Hague LD is the only UPC LD outside of Germany to have significant traction, relatively speaking.
Those Dolby and SPT cases against Roku serve as a warning that patentees seeking swift decisions must look elsewhere. More than 14 months after the complaints were filed, not even an interim conference has been scheduled. If Dolby and SPT had filed in the Munich I Regional Court instead, and if their time to trial had been similar as in the Philips case in the same court, the trials might already have taken place, or would otherwise (in light of the vacation season) have been scheduled for September.
What can the UPC do?
ip fray wants the UPC to succeed and considers itself part of the UPC ecosystem. But that does not prevent us from talking about issues that must be addressed. The case management system (CMS) is one of them, but a new one is going to launch soon, and we are looking forward to it.
It would probably make sense for the UPC to assign additional full-time judges to the Munich LD, and they must be the ones patentees trust (i.e., preferably from the Munich I Regional Court). In the alternative, patentees will just file more cases in the Munich I Regional Court.
If other contracting member states than Germany take issue with that, higher court fees (which would result from setting higher dispute values) can at least ensure that no other country has to foot part of the bill for the sky-high case load of Germany-based LDs.
It’s not the judges’ fault. They work hard, but especially in Munich they just get too many cases.
Litigants should also do their part. If they bring only one or two cases, they may not want to take their chances. With a critical mass of cases, however, plaintiffs can try out different LDs. We have seen high-quality decisions from multiple LDs, which is why we do not want to take a position on where to go when time is of the essence. However, here is a practical recommendation:
The UPC should assign a second permanent judge to the Vienna LD. That would lead to greater predictability as the majority of the panel would be known beforehand, with a reasonably high likelihood of the third legally qualified judge being from Germany anyway (as the local language is German). Vienna is easily accessible from any German city and from foreign countries. By now, the Vienna LD’s Presiding Judge Dr. Walter Schober is fairly well-known in the UPC community as a pragmatic, facts-focused decision-maker. If patent holders want to enjoy the benefits they find in Germany, but without the delays caused by particularly the Munich LD’s overload, Vienna is the culturally and linguistically closest non-German alternative to Munich. Even two of the other three German LDs are geographically further away from Munich.
The current situation is unsustainable. There are disputes where settlements will happen while the UPC is not moving forward, but parties will remember where they got the decisive leverage and prioritize those courts next time. If parties rely primarily or entirely on UPC cases, the mere passage of time will rarely help, particularly not in SEP cases. Firm near-term trial dates bring about settlements, however. The Bartz v. Anthropic AI copyright case in the Northern District of California is the most recent high-profile example (August 26, 2025 ai fray article).