This is a follow-up to yesterday’s report on a UK antisuit injunction (ASI) Amazon obtained against the anti-interim-license injunctions (AILIs) InterDigital was granted by the Unified Patent Court (UPC)’s Mannheim Local Division (LD) and the Munich I Regional Court. We published the order itself. Meanwhile, Mr Justice Meade has made his reasons public. Here are some observations:
It is now known, as a result of that new UK document, that the UPC’s Mannheim LD has scheduled an AILI hearing for November 14, 2025. By the time this article was written, that hearing was not yet on the UPC’s published calendar. The hearing must be held because Amazon objected to the ex parte decision.
The order notes that Amazon has no particular deadline for objecting to the Munich I Regional Court’s AILI, but that it either has done so by now or will do so.
Mr Justice Meade’s concern was not merely about whether Amazon could seek an interim-license declaration in the High Court of Justice for England & Wales (EWHC) but even more so about the specific-performance injunction Amazon would like to receive after a full trial. That one would obligate InterDigital to grant a worldwide long-term license on terms set by the English courts.
In this regard, he accuses InterDigital’s counsel of having changed his positions as to whether the UPC and Munich AILIs would also bar Amazon from enforcing a specific-performance injunction that would force InterDigital to grant a worldwide license on terms determined by the English judiciary. The new document discusses what InterDigital’s counsel said, including that in opposing Amazon’s motion to expedite the UK proceedings, InterDigital’s counsel suggested that the purpose was ” to circumvent the orders of the German Court and the UPC.” That statement and others were referenced by Amazon, which argued that it feared Interdigital would either take the position that Amazon acts in breach of the AILIs if it obtains a specific-performance injunction after a full trial or that InterDigital would bring one or more new motions for injunctive relief in the UPC and/or Germany to that effect.
For the most part, the judgment gives lip service to comity while actually seeking to assert the UK’s worldwide authority over global licensing disputes without accepting that there are jurisdictions (such as the UPC and Germany) in which InterDigital owns enforceable intellectual property rights, with enforcement being subject to the rules that exist (including case law) in those jurisdictions. The only part of the judgment that refers to actions and not just words is where Mr Justice Meade says that nothing would be blocked in the UPC or in Germany because he will hold an injunction hearing on October 30, and no hearings are scheduled in the UPC or Germany during that period. He even opens the door to a motion by InterDigital to “set aside or vary” the UK injunction.
Where the order is very difficult to follow is the part on why this relief should be granted ex parte (without notice to InterDigital). Mr Justice Meade blamed InterDigital’s counsel for telling (via a sworn declaration) the foreign courts that InterDigital needed ex parte AILIs so as to prevent ex parte UK AAASIs. The judge suggested then that this was maybe theoretically possible, but not really going to happen. Now, however, he has done just that: an ex parte AAASI (the fact that he calls it an AASI does not change anything). The only explanation his judgment offers is this:
The facts are now very different. Things have moved on. The UPC and German courts have made their orders. I have conducted my hearing. The parties have taken positions; InterDigital has expanded its stance. I have made certain provisional criticisms of InterDigital’s behaviour on the previous occasion and I think from all of the much-changed context, there is a very real likelihood, which would have been harder to show at the earlier stage, that InterDigital would seek urgent ex parte relief in another court if given notice of this hearing.
That part is not convincing. It comes down to saying that by actually seeking an ex parte injunction, InterDigital has created a situation in which the UK court would therefore also grant an ex parte against InterDigital because it would now be credible that InterDigital might do that. Apart from such speculation having zero relevance to whether InterDigital’s UK counsel reasonably provided a sworn declaration telling the UPC and the Munich court that ex parte injunctions are a possibility in the UK (which Mr Justice Meade never denied and merely declared unlikely), the standard he laid out in this new judgment supports InterDigital’s position all the way: Amazon obviously would have told the UK court of scenarios in which InterDigital sought ex parte AASIs. At least two such cases are very well-documented:
- the one against Xiaomi in Munich in February 2021 (an AASI/AAAASI on the occasion of which the presiding judge at the time laid out various criteria and, for the first time in a written order, indicated that those seeking antisuit injunctions against German proceedings might be deemed unwilling licensees for that reason), and
- the recent one(s) against Disney (May 30, 2025 ip fray article).
Simply put, if all that Amazon needed to do was to show to the UK court that InterDigital would actually obtain ex parte anti-antisuit injunctions, it already had sufficient evidence for that prior to the recent AILIs.
Finally, one section of the judgment makes it clear that InterDigital remains free to seek injunctions against patent infringement. That means it is now up to the UPC and/or the Munich I Regional Court to consider Amazon an unwilling licensee, place significant weight on the fact that the window of opportunity for InterDigital to enforce its rights is closing in light of a forthcoming specific-performance injunction in the UK that will force InterDigital into a license, and to order, on that basis, ex parte preliminary injunctions over some of InterDigital’s patents. Mr Justice Meade himself wrote the following in his judgment (para. 41):
I do not think it is even arguable on the face of paragraph 5 that that kind of substantive relief is blocked, and I make clear through these reasons that that is not the effect of paragraph 5.
By “substantive relief” Mr Justice Meade means injunctions against infringement.