Context: InterDigital and Disney have been fighting over video codec standard-essential patents (SEPs) since February 2025 (February 3, 2025 ip fray article). The Munich I Regional Court previously handed InterDigital three separate injunctions against Disney over patents covering the overlay of a second video stream, such as subtitles, high dynamic range (HDR) (November 21, 2025 ip fray article), and HEVC encoding (February 13, 2026 ip fray article). The UPC Düsseldorf Local Division (LD) added a fourth injunction in July, covering 11 countries and requiring Disney to recall the infringing HEVC technology (July 23, 2026 ip fray article). Disney reacted by switching off premium video features for its German customers, then partly restored 4K streaming in early August using VP9 as an alternative to HEVC, though HDR support remained unavailable and concerns lingered over whether VP9 itself was clean of InterDigital’s patents (August 5, 2026 ip fray article).
What’s new: InterDigital has expanded its UPC litigation against Disney to directly target VP9, the codec Disney adopted as a workaround for the HEVC injunctions. InterDigital’s Chief Legal Officer Josh Schmidt said in a company update that Disney’s use of VP9 “continues to infringe [its] patented innovation”, and that Disney “cannot use it to avoid paying us fair royalties while also delivering an inferior experience to its customers” (August 2026 InterDigital blog post).
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