This is not the first time that the US firm has represented the streaming platform, with Quinn Emanuel working for Netflix in previous litigation against Broadcom. Now, however, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, led by managing partner Marcus Grosch, is representing Netflix in Germany.
This is the first public representation by Hoyng ROKH Monegier for Netflix in the Netherlands, although the German team has represented the company in previous disputes. The litigation team was supported by its in-house patent attorneys, namely Peter Lin. In the Netherlands, Hoyng ROKH Monegier is acting for DivX, in a team led by partner Bart van den Broek.
Now DivX is looking to enforce the injunction in Germany.īart van den Broek Netflix casts the net wide Previously, in August 2022, it had also denied Netflix’s request to stay the enforcement of the injunction. Due to its general importance, the court has published the ruling in German on its website. In a ruling handed down on 26 October 2022, the court rejected the requests of both parties (case ID 6 U 131/22). DivX, on the other hand, asked the court to reduce the security bond. Netflix also asked the Higher Regional Court Karlsruhe to increase the security bond to be paid by DivX in the event of the enforcement of the judgments. In German preliminary injunction proceedings, Netflix appealed the infringement judgment from the Regional Court Mannheim. The main hearing will take place on 24 January 2023 if the division invalidates the patent, proceedings over EP 666 in the Netherlands and Germany could be over. Netflix International also filed an EPO opposition to EP 666 in October 2021, with the Opposition Division issuing a preliminary opinion in June 2022. JUVE Patent is not yet aware whether DivX will appeal the decision. The Dutch court stated it could not form an opinion on either the infringement or validity of EP 666. Netflix argued that the German judges had scrutinised the patent’s validity, with the company arguing the patent’s invalidity on the basis of lack of novelty, inventive step and added matter.Īs such, according to the Dutch court, DivX did not meet its obligation to put forward evidence in the present preliminary relief proceedings and has not sufficiently refuted Netflix’s invalidity attack. Furthermore, the judgment also notes that DivX failed to address the Germany preliminary injunction proceedings during the Dutch hearing, which had taken place in Mannheim a week prior to the Dutch hearing. However, the deputy judge rejected the claim. Since Netflix GmbH is an affiliate of Netflix NL, DivX requested the Dutch courts comply with the Mannheim court’s finding of infringement. Here, DivX argued that Netflix acted unlawfully by inciting its daughter company, Netflix Services Germany, to infringe or to facilitate infringing acts. According to DivX, Netflix had changed the contracting party of its services in Germany from Netflix NL to Netflix Services GmbH thus, DivX turned to the Dutch courts for an injunction against members of the Netflix group to prevent infringement in Germany. It also covers two other aspects of online video streaming, such as the ability to skip forward and backwards within a video, as well as a way of changing the video quality to cope with changing bandwidth.įollowing the two injunctions in Germany, DivX turned to the Dutch court for an injunction against members of the Netflix group. DivX turns to the NetherlandsĮP 34 67 666 protects streaming technology that allows computers to interpret data and display data visually as a video. The court also ruled that the company must pay €80,676 in court costs to Netflix. As a result, it rejected DivX’s claim of infringement in the Netherlands. However, the Amsterdam court has ruled that this does not automatically apply to a foreign judgment. In Dutch procedural law, this so-called alignment rule covers an interim relief judge being, in principle, obliged to align their judgment with a parallel Dutch decision on the merits and/or a European Patent Office decision.
It ordered two injunctions against Netflix as a result. In April 2022, the German court found Netflix infringed two of DivX’s patents through its High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) as part of its platform (case ID: 7 O 88/21). The District Court of Amsterdam has ruled that it is not obligated to align its decision with a previous infringement decision made by Mannheim Regional Court (Case ID: C/13/724642). In its dispute with video streaming giant Netflix, video coding developer DivX has stumbled in the Dutch arm of proceedings.
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