Disney has suffered yet another defeat in its ongoing patent dispute with a company called InterDigital, resulting in its streaming platform losing even more functionality.
A Dusseldorf-based court has just ruled that InterDigital is entitled to an injunction against Disney over its unlicensed use of a technology that enables users to share or cast short video content between devices. As a result, the Disney+ streaming platform has now disabled Google Cast and AirPlay 2 functionality in Germany and the Netherlands.
For now, the ruling by the Unified Patent Court only affects Disney+ subscribers in those two territories, and it’s not clear if the company will be forced to disable the features in other countries.
But don’t be surprised if that happens. As we’ve seen several times this year, the impact of such rulings can quickly escalate. Disney+ has already switched off 4K, HDR10, Dolby Vision and 3D functionality in numerous European countries as a result of successive legal victories by InterDigital, which holds a number of patents for those technologies. Most recently, InterDigital said it’s also filing yet another injunction request against Disney after it switched from the HEVC codec to the older VP9 standard in order to continue providing 4K content to some subscribers.
A report by Broadcast Now says that Disney has now been slapped with no less than eight injunctions won by InterDigital since it filed its first complaint back in February 2025. Disney argued against the injunctions, but patent courts in Dusseldorf, Munich, Mannheim and even in Brazil have consistently sided with InterDigital, forcing Disney to drastically scale back its premium features in countries affected by the rulings.
With regard to the latest ruling, Broadcast Now says Disney initially only disabled Google Cast. However, technology analyst Aaron posted on X that the company has now shut down Apple’s AirPlay screen casting feature too. It has been disabled on Disney+’s Android, iOS, Windows and macOS applications. Users in Germany and the Netherlands who try to enable the feature will now be met with an error message that says it’s not available in their country.
The latest defeat suggests that Disney may have to bite the bullet and simply cough up and pay InterDigital’s licensing fees, but it’s not clear if it will do so. While Amazon caved in and agreed terms with InterDigital, Disney has stubbornly refused to do so – likely because it subscribes to the view that the company is really just a patent troll, squeezing companies for money despite not providing any actual value.
While it doesn’t manufacture any products or offer any consumer-based services, InterDigital rejects the patent troll label, insisting that it spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on researching video, wireless and AI technology standards that it makes available to others.
Unfortunately for Disney, it doesn’t appear to have too many options aside from winning an appeal against the Patent Court rulings. Its back up plan to use the VP9 codec might soon go out the window too, and while Disney could always adopt the newer and open-source AV1 codec instead, the problem with that is that most TVs don’t support it, meaning most of its subscribers would still continue to miss out on 4K, HDR, casting and so on.
