Disney+ disables Dolby Vision in 11 countries following European patent injunction
Disney+ has disabled Dolby Vision and 3D streaming support in 11 European countries following an injunction from the Unified Patent Court. The court ruled in favor of InterDigital, which claimed Disney's HEVC video encoding infringed its patents, while Amazon Prime Video has reportedly secured a licensing deal with InterDigital to avoid similar service disruptions.
Key Takeaways
- Disney+ removed Dolby Vision and 3D options for premium members in 11 countries, including Denmark.
- The Unified Patent Court in Mannheim ruled that Disney infringed on InterDigital's HEVC patents.
- Amazon Prime Video secured a licensing deal with InterDigital in June 2026 to avoid similar service disruptions.
- Disney previously cited "technical challenges" for similar regional outages in February before the legal dispute became public.
- The injunction specifically targets HEVC video encoding techniques, which the court ruled as valid intellectual property.
Why It Matters
This ruling establishes a significant precedent for the Unified Patent Court's authority over cross-border streaming technology in Europe. By targeting the HEVC encoding layer rather than consumer-facing standards, InterDigital has successfully leveraged infrastructure patents to impact premium service tiers. The immediate divergence between Disney and Amazon—where the latter chose settlement over service degradation—indicates that patent holders now possess sufficient legal leverage to disrupt major streamers' product roadmaps. Moving forward, providers must decide between paying licensing premiums for proprietary encoding techniques or risking technical regressions that alienate high-paying subscribers in key markets.
Additional Context
The Unified Patent Court (UPC) ruling in June 2026 marks a pivotal victory for InterDigital, specifically addressing video encoding patent EP2465265 B1. According to legal analysis from Substack in June 2026, the court's decision is particularly notable because it explicitly ruled that certain video encoding patents are not considered Standard Essential Patents (SEPs). This classification means they are not subject to Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) licensing obligations, giving patent holders significantly more pricing power and the ability to seek direct injunctions rather than just royalty negotiations. Before this broader pan-European injunction, InterDigital had already secured similar legal wins against Disney in regional courts. Per Investing.com in June 2026, courts in Germany and Brazil had previously issued injunctions regarding High Dynamic Range (HDR) and video compression technologies. Disney’s attempts to use a FRAND defense were dismissed by the UPC, as the court found that while HEVC decoding is standardized, the specific encoding process is not part of the technical specification, thus allowing for proprietary patent enforcement. In contrast, Amazon reached a settlement to resolve its parallel litigation just days before the Disney ruling. Per the Wall Street Journal in June 2026, Amazon and InterDigital entered into a global patent license agreement covering Prime Video and Fire TV devices. Analysts at William Blair estimated that this agreement could generate between $40 million and $80 million in recurring annual revenue for InterDigital, highlighting the high cost for streamers to maintain premium features like Dolby Vision. This settlement allows Amazon to bypass the technical downgrades now facing Disney+ subscribers in the 11 affected European jurisdictions.
Read full article at inkl.com