Disney+ loses Dolby Vision in 11 EU countries following patent injunction
The Unified Patent Court has issued an injunction against Disney in 11 EU countries over InterDigital's HEVC patents, forcing the removal of Dolby Vision and 3D video features from Disney+. The patent dispute centers on licensed video encoding techniques, whereas competitor Amazon has reportedly resolved its licensing terms with InterDigital to maintain Dolby Vision support.
Key Takeaways
- Mannheim Local Division of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) issued an injunction covering 11 EU member states.
- InterDigital successfully claimed Disney's use of HEVC encoding techniques infringed on its patent portfolio.
- Amazon Prime Video brokered a separate licensing deal with InterDigital to avoid similar service disruptions.
- Disney previously cited 'technical challenges' for feature outages in February before this legal mandate was confirmed.
Why It Matters
This ruling highlights the high-stakes friction between patent holders and streaming giants over standard-essential technologies like HEVC. For Disney+, losing premium visual tiers in major European markets complicates its value proposition relative to price-hiked Premium plans. The immediate implication is a fragmented user experience across the EU, where subscribers pay identical rates for diminished video fidelity. Conversely, Amazon's proactive licensing highlights a strategic divergence in handling intellectual property costs versus litigation risks. Watch for Disney to either negotiate a retroactive licensing fee with InterDigital or deploy a non-infringing encoding workaround to restore parity before further subscriber churn occurs.
Additional Context
The dispute between Disney and InterDigital reflects a broader intensifying legal landscape surrounding High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). In 2024 and 2025, licensing entities and patent pools such as HEVC Advance and Access Advance have ramped up enforcement against hardware and software manufacturers. According to a report by IAM in April 2026, the streaming sector is increasingly targeted as patent holders seek to capture revenue from high-bitrate HDR delivery. This specific UPC injunction follows years of litigation in German courts, which have historically been friendly to patent holders, making Mannheim a strategic litigation hub for IP firms like InterDigital. Per Law.com, June 2026, the UPC's ability to issue pan-European injunctions significantly increases the leverage of patent holders compared to individual national court rulings. Furthermore, the shift toward AV1 (AOMedia Video 1), an open-source, royalty-free alternative to HEVC, is being accelerated by these legal pressures. Per TechCrunch, May 2026, Disney and other major streamers have joined the Alliance for Open Media to mitigate long-term exposure to HEVC licensing fees. However, the transition is hindered by the massive installed base of hardware decoders that still rely on HEVC for 4K and HDR10+ playback. This current outage marks a critical moment where licensing costs directly impact front-end product features for millions of consumers, potentially forcing a faster industry-wide migration to alternative codecs to avoid the recurring 'patent tax' associated with Dolby Vision and related HDR standards.
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