InterDigital, Inc. (with two subsidiaries) has filed a District of Delaware complaint against Amazon (1:25-cv-01365). By introduction, the plaintiff pleads that despite efforts "to find a mutually agreeable solution" without litigation, "Amazon abruptly initiated litigation in the United Kingdom seeking declaratory relief unrelated to the patents asserted in this Complaint. It also launched litigation in Sao Paolo, Brazil challenging 18 of InterDigital's issued patents in that jurisdiction". In the Delaware complaint, InterDigital asserts five patents, one homegrown, one originating with Sony, and three originating with Thompson Licensing. InterDigital also announced that it has filed related litigation against Amazon in Brazil and Germany, with additional litigation reportedly filed in the Mannheim Local Division (Mannheim LD) of the Unified Patent Court (UPC).
The aforementioned UK litigation is the case that Amazon filed in the UK High Court in August 2025, seeking the determination of a fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) license to certain InterDigital video codec patents, as well declarations of noninfringement, lack of essentiality, and invalidity for the UK parts of four European bundle patents. The case included a request for a declaration that Amazon is entitled to an interim FRAND license that applies until the court makes its final FRAND determination. That request prompted a jurisdictional battle with two other key patent venues in Europe: In September, Germany's Munich I Regional Court and the UPC's Mannheim LD issued the first-ever anti-interim-license injunctions (AILIs) barring Amazon from pursuing an interim license. The UK High Court has since filed back, issuing an order enjoining the patent owner from preventing Amazon from pursuing its remaining claim for a final FRAND determination.
More on that back-and-forth can be found at "UK High Court Bars InterDigital from Blocking Final FRAND Ruling in Amazon Case" (October 2025).
InterDigital accuses Amazon of infringing those patents (8,363,724; 8,681,855; 9,747,674; 10,741,211; 11,917,146) through the provision of (1) "HDR Accused Instrumentalities", defined to include "all Amazon devices capable of playing back HDR10, HDR10+, or Dolby Vision content including at least the following: Fire TV Stick HD, Fire TV Stick 4K Select, Fire TV Stick 4K Plus, Fire TV Stick 4K Max, Fire TV Cube, Fire TV 2-Series, Fire TV 4-Series, and Fire TV Omni Series"; and (2) "AV1/VP9 Accused Instrumentalities", defined to include "all Amazon devices capable of decoding AV1 or VP9 content including at least the following: Fire Stick 4K, Fire TV Stick 4K Max, Fire TV Stick 4K Plus, Fire TV Cube, Fire TV 2-Seires, Fire TV 4-Series, Fire Max 11, Echo Show 15, Echo Show 21".
In the complaint, InterDigital also uses the term "AV1 Accused Instrumentalities" without definition. One could assume that these instrumentalities are the same as the AV1/VP9 Accused Instrumentalities. HDR stand for "High Dynamic Range" and refers to video technology "allowing content to display a much wider depth and range of brightness, contrast, and color than traditional Standard Dynamic Range ('SDR') video". AV1 is an encoding technology (for compressing and decompressing information for transit and then display), which InterDigital explains was "developed as a successor to both VP9 and HEVC. AV1 incorporates numerous technical improvements, including enhanced motion prediction, transform coding, and entropy coding, enabling up to 30% greater compression efficiency than HEVC at the same visual quality".
InterDigital has several open litigation campaigns, both in the US and abroad. In its various complaints, InterDigital often recounts a view of its history: beginning as "one of the most successful and innovative research and development companies of the last half century", as "founded by Sherwin Seligsohn in 1972 as International Mobile Machines Corporation (IMM)", and as having "demonstrated one of the first wireless telephones during the bicentennial celebrations in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park, the same place that Alexander Graham Bell first demonstrated his telephone 100 years earlier" through to its current status, per InterDigital, as "a global manufacturer of various cellular, wireless, and video devices—including smartphones, computers, tablets, and components thereof".
Farnan LLP filed the complaint for InterDigital, signing over a block that includes McKool Smith, P.C., the plaintiff's frequent counsel. The suit has yet to be assigned to a judge. 11/7, District of Delaware.
Editor's Note: This article was updated after publication to reflect the reported filing of InterDigital's UPC litigation.
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