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Context: Earlier this year, research and licensing firm InterDigital (NASDAQ: IDCC), which is on a growth trajectory (July 30, 2025 ip fray article), started to enforce multimedia patents against Disney’s streaming services (also including Disney’s Hulu and ESPN subsidiaries) in the United States, the Unified Patent Court (UPC), Germany and Brazil (February 3, 2025 ip fray article). Disney tried to derail those enforcement actions through a U.S. FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) complaint, but InterDigital pre-emptively obtained anti-antisuit relief, resulting in the first-ever anti-antisuit injunction (AASI) in the city of Mannheim (May 30, 2025 ip fray article).

What’s new: This morning, InterDigital announced that it has been awarded a preliminary injunction (PI) against Disney by the 7th Corporate Court of the Judicial District of the [State] Capital of Rio de Janeiro over two patents relating to Advanced Video Coding (AVC, H.264) and High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC, H.265) video coding techniques. The announcement notes that the decision is based on a court-commissioned independent expert report and a holding that there is no FRAND licensing obligation connected to the asserted encoder claims. The standards in question define decoding (playing video data), not encoding (making new or converting existing recordings).

Direct impact: Unlike most Brazilian SEP injunctions, which tend to be based on the principle of protecting intellectual property on a provisional basis, this one is merits-based. The first such Brazilian patent PI became known earlier this year in, by coincidence, another video streaming case (February 11, 2025 ip fray article). This does not mean to say that Disney is left without any recourse. But the fact that the court made the decision based on a full evaluation of the technical merits and after rejecting the notion of there being a FRAND defense in this case substantially ups the ante for Disney.

Wider ramifications: This is now the second forum in which the encoding of videos in formats standardized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has been deemed to fall squarely outside the scope of the FRAND pledge that contributors to ITU standards development enter into. Earlier this year, the United States International Trade Commission’s (USITC or ITC) Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Doris Johnson Hines reached that conclusion in the investigation of a Nokia complaint against Amazon (section 4 of a February 11, 2025 ip fray article). This question will also have to be addressed by the High Court of Justice for England & Wales (EWHC) at and after a hearing take place in the second half of next month (September 10, 2025 ip fray article).

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The case number is case no. 0811901-50.2025.8.19.0001. The patents-in-suit are PI 0305519-1 (translated title: “Adaptive weighting of reference images in video encoding”) and PI 0318825-6 (translated title: “Method of encoding video signal data for an image block”). The injunction explicitly states that such encoding patent claims are not subject to the FRAND licensing obligation connected with the standard. The court also threw out an argument related to predictive encoding because it is optional: it can be deactivated.

The injunction orders Disney to refrain, within a matter of five days, from encoding or distributing in Brazil any video data in the AVC or HEVC formats to the extent they make use the weighted prediction tool. Infringement would result in the accumulation of a fine amounting to approximately US$18K per day.

The expert report spans approximately 200 pages answering 68 questions posed by the court, addressing technical as well as FRAND licensing questions. Simply put, Disney did not prevail on any key question. The expert agrees with Disney that InterDigital has not presented evidence of Disney performing the relevant encoding steps in Brazil, but that is not needed to infringe. The distribution of video data in infringing formats is enough. That is also the standard in various other jurisdictions such as Germany. Disney’s non-infringement arguments with respect to the distribution of allegedly infringing video data failed.

If Disney attempted to obtain a U.S. ASI against enforcement in Brazil, it would

• face the possibility of an AASI and/or court sanctions in Brazil, and
• potentially be deemed an unwilling licensee, for that maneuvering alone, in Germany and maybe even the UPC.

The likelihood of a near-term settlement has definitely increased as a result of this injunction, but Disney is a deep-pocketed organization and may want to appeal.

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Court, expert and counsel

Poder Judiciário do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Judiciary of the State of Rio de Janeiro): Principal Judge Simone Gastesi Chevrand (link to Brazilian article with two pictures of her).

Court expert: telecommunications researcher Dr. David Fernandes Cruz Moura in conjunction with technical assistant Dr. João Abdalla Ney da Silva.

Counsel for InterDigital: Licks Attorneys’ Carlos Aboim, Rodolfo Barreto and Bruno Falque; and Salomão Advogados’ Paulo Salomão and Luis Felipe Salomão.

Counsel for Disney: Dannemann Siemsens’s Eduardo da Gama Camara Junior, Ronaldo Lopes Stoffel, Fabiano Lemos dos Santos Alves Gonzaga, Marcelo Leite da Silva Mazzola and Joaquim Eugenio Gomes da Silva Goulart Pereira.

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