On September 2, 2026, the Düsseldorf Regional Division of the European Unified Patent Court issued its first-instance judgment in the patent infringement case brought by InterDigital against Disney. The court found the patent in question valid within the scope of the narrowed Claim 1 and ordered Disney to cease providing infringing services in Germany and the Netherlands, while also imposing obligations regarding disclosure and compensation.
The patent in question is European Patent EP2080349B1, which relates to technology for sharing multimedia content in peer-to-peer configurations. The original applicant was Sony Ericsson; the patent was later assigned to InterDigital. InterDigital alleged that Disney’s Disney+ streaming service indirectly infringed the patent through web pages and various mobile applications. Disney, in turn, filed a counterclaim seeking revocation, arguing that all relevant claims were invalid.
Regarding patent validity, the court found that claims 1, 4, and 8 of the granted version lacked novelty relative to two prior art documents and should be revoked. However, the court found that InterDigital’s auxiliary request K5—which added a series of limitations to claim 1, such as “discovering a device,” “IP network broadcasting,” and “establishing a Wi-Fi link”—met the requirements for clarity, did not constitute an addition, and possessed novelty and non-obviousness. Consequently, claim 1 was upheld as valid within its narrowed scope.
Regarding the finding of infringement, the court adopted the plaintiff’s interpretation of the claim terms, holding that the “currentTime” pointer in the Disney+ service constitutes session data, that playback position, language, and subtitle selections constitute user-created programming, and that the transmission of media content does not require identical files but only needs to reflect the same content. The court confirmed that the defendant’s conduct constitutes indirect infringement within the meaning of Article 26(1) of the Agreement on the Unified Patent Court.
Regarding remedies, the court ordered the defendant to cease supplying or offering to supply the allegedly infringing service in Germany and the Netherlands and granted the plaintiff’s requests for disclosure of information and financial records, while simultaneously issuing a confidentiality order in accordance with procedural rules. The court dismissed the plaintiff’s claim for provisional damages of 200,000 euros and rejected Disney’s request for a security deposit of no less than 30 million euros.
To date, InterDigital has obtained three injunctions against Disney in Germany and two UPC injunctions; this ruling marks the sixth injunction InterDigital has secured against Disney at the German and UPC levels. IP Finance will continue to monitor further developments.
Case Background
In February 2025, InterDigital filed SEP infringement lawsuits against Disney and its subsidiaries Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the UPC’s Mannheim and Düsseldorf Regional Divisions, the First Regional Court of Munich in Germany, and the State Court of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil;
In May 2025, the UPC Mannheim Regional Division issued its first anti-injunction order (AASI), preventing Disney from seeking an injunction;
In August 2025, Disney filed an antitrust lawsuit against InterDigital in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, alleging abuse of patent licensing and illegal monopolization;
In September 2025, InterDigital made progress in the 7th Commercial Court of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, securing two preliminary injunctions against Disney;
In February 2026, the First Regional Court of Munich, Germany, issued a judgment granting InterDigital a third injunction against Disney;
In June 2026, the Mannheim Regional Division of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) issued a ruling approving an 11-country injunction against Disney’s streaming services and confirming the validity of the patents in question;
On July 23, 2026, the Düsseldorf Regional Division of the UPC issued another ruling granting InterDigital a second 11-country injunction, this time involving a different HEVC encoding patent;
In August 2026, InterDigital filed new lawsuits with the UPC Regional Divisions in Mannheim and Düsseldorf, respectively, alleging that Disney’s VP9 encoding scheme and its “Up-Next” feature still fell within the scope of its patent protection;
On September 2, 2026, the UPC Regional Division in Düsseldorf issued a first-instance judgment, finding that Patent EP2080349 was valid within the narrowed scope of Claim 1 and ordering Disney to cease providing infringing services in Germany and the Netherlands.
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