On Wednesday, October 7, 2026, South Korea's Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) and three Korean universities sued The Walt Disney Company in federal court in Delaware. They say Disney+, Hulu, Hulu Live and ESPN's streaming services infringe five patents on HEVC, the video-compression standard (also called H.265) that makes high-quality streaming practical. IAM broke the story the next day, and it has been one of the most closely watched new streaming patent filings in our feed since. The case is Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute v. The Walt Disney Company, No. 1:26-cv-01290 in the District of Delaware.
This is not a one-off. It is ETRI's second HEVC lawsuit in three months, after a July suit against Snap, and it lands while Disney is already fighting other video-codec patent owners in the U.S. and Europe. The fight is really about one question: who pays for the technology that squeezes a 4K movie down enough to stream to your TV?
What ETRI is claiming
According to the docket and IAM's reporting on the complaint:
- Four plaintiffs, five patents. ETRI is joined by the University-Industry Cooperation Group of Kyung Hee University, the Industry-University Cooperation Foundation of Korea Aerospace University and the Kwangwoon University Industry-Academic Collaboration Foundation. They assert U.S. Patent Nos. 11,595,643, 10,021,416, 10,194,168, 10,742,996 and 10,003,820. ETRI owns two outright. The other three are jointly owned with one or more of the universities.
- Standard-essential patents. The plaintiffs say these are standard-essential patents (SEPs): patents you cannot avoid if you follow the HEVC standard. They cover different parts of how video is encoded and decoded.
- Nine Disney defendants. The complaint names The Walt Disney Company and eight affiliates: Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution, Disney DTC, Disney Streaming Services, Disney Entertainment & Sports, Disney Platform Distribution, BAMTech (the streaming technology business Disney bought to build Disney+), Hulu and ESPN.
- The accused services. Disney+, Hulu, Hulu Live and ESPN streaming, to the extent they use HEVC to encode and deliver video.
- What they want. Damages reaching back as far as six years before filing (the limit under U.S. patent law), a jury trial, and a declaration that the plaintiffs have met their obligations to license on reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms.
Disney has not yet appeared in the case. As of this week, the docket shows only the complaint, the required notice to the Patent Office, the plaintiffs' corporate disclosure statements and the issued summonses.
The patent pool behind the lawsuit
The most important player in this case isn't a party. ETRI licenses these patents through Access Advance, which runs a Video Distribution Patent Pool (VDP). The pool sells streaming services one license covering four major codecs: HEVC (H.265), VVC (H.266), VP9 and AV1.
The complaint lays out the plaintiffs' version of the history, as summarized by IAM:
- December 2024: Access Advance approached Disney about the VDP pool.
- February 2025: The two sides signed a confidentiality agreement, and Access Advance sent over program details, license terms and pricing.
- November 2025: The pool gave Disney a patent list that included the five asserted patents.
- September 2026: An updated list followed. Disney still didn't sign.
- October 7, 2026: ETRI and the universities sued.
That timeline matters. In SEP cases, courts look closely at whether the patent owner offered a fair license and whether the accused company negotiated in good faith. By pleading nearly two years of outreach, and asking the court to declare that they satisfied their RAND obligations, the plaintiffs are getting ahead of the defense that Disney was never given a fair offer.
The VDP pool lists eight licensees: Meta, Roku, ByteDance, Tencent America, Kuaishou, Beijing Youku, NTT DOCOMO and an Alibaba affiliate. Disney isn't one of them, and neither is Snap.
Disney's codec problem
This case is the latest in a run of video-technology patent fights for Disney:
- Adeia. Adeia (formerly TiVo/Xperi) sued Disney over streaming patents in the U.S., Germany and the Unified Patent Court (UPC). That case, Adeia Technologies Inc. v. The Walt Disney Company in Delaware, settled in 2025. IAM reports that ETRI cites the Adeia case in its complaint to support its allegations about how Disney's streaming systems work.
- InterDigital. InterDigital has been fighting Disney over video-coding patents on both sides of the Atlantic, including InterDigital, Inc. v. The Walt Disney Company in Los Angeles. In Europe, the UPC's Düsseldorf local division reportedly granted InterDigital a second multi-country injunction against Disney in July 2026.
- ETRI. Now a pool licensor is suing too, over the same basic technology.
Together, these suits suggest codec patent owners now see streaming services, not just device makers, as the people who should pay. For years, video-codec royalties were mostly collected from companies that make TVs, phones and chips. Pools like Access Advance's VDP program are built to collect from the services that encode and send the video as well.
The Snap case is the preview
ETRI's July complaint, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute v. Snap Inc., No. 1:26-cv-00918, also in Delaware, asserted six HEVC patents: the same five now asserted against Disney plus U.S. Patent No. 9,883,182. ETRI followed up with an infringement action against Snap at the UPC on a European patent. Snap is also being sued by another Access Advance licensor, Dolby, in the U.S., Brazil, the U.K. and the UPC, and IAM reports that Snap has filed its own patent action in response.
The Snap docket is still early. The parties agreed to extend Snap's deadline to respond to the complaint in August. Expect Disney to follow a similar playbook: an extension, then likely a mix of defenses. Those could include arguments that its encoders don't practice the claims, that the patents aren't actually essential to HEVC, that some are invalid, and that the pool's royalty demands aren't reasonable. A RAND fight could also bring in the question of whether a court, rather than the parties, should set the rate.
What happens next
The case is at its very beginning. The next signals to watch:
- Disney's response. An answer, a motion to dismiss or a request for more time will show how hard Disney intends to fight.
- Counterclaims. In SEP cases, defendants often counterclaim for breach of RAND obligations. That would turn the case into a fight over the royalty rate itself.
- Europe. ETRI went to the UPC against Snap within weeks. The UPC can grant injunctions covering many countries at once, and InterDigital has already won them against Disney. A European filing against Disney would raise the pressure considerably.
- A pool license. Most SEP fights end with the defendant signing a license. The question is the price, and whether Disney signs the full VDP pool license or negotiates separately.
We're tracking the filings on the ETRI v. Disney case page, alongside the related Snap, Dolby and InterDigital dockets.
What this means for filmmakers and other creators
A patent fight over video compression might sound like a problem only for streaming engineers. But every independent film gets made, delivered and sold through the technology at the center of this case.
Your film is encoded with patented technology. Whether you export H.264 or HEVC from your editing software, deliver to a streamer, or upload to YouTube or Vimeo, someone is paying codec royalties. Usually it's the camera maker, the software company or the platform. For most filmmakers, those licenses come bundled into the tools you already pay for. If you're building your own streaming or transactional VOD platform, though, ask your encoding and video-hosting vendors who covers codec licensing.
Technology costs shape what buyers pay. Streamers pay for content and for the infrastructure to deliver it. Every royalty, settlement or injunction in fights like this adds to the cost of running a streaming service. That pressure shows up in licensing budgets, in what platforms are willing to pay for library titles, and in how many services consolidate or shut down.
Pools are how fragmented rights get licensed. HEVC has thousands of patents owned by dozens of companies, so pools package them into one license. Film financing has its own version: collection account management. When many people have a stake in a film's revenue (investors, guilds, talent with backend points, sales agents), a neutral collection account gathers the money and pays everyone according to an agreed waterfall. Clear structure up front prevents the kind of years-long dispute playing out here.
Paper trails win licensing fights. ETRI's complaint leans heavily on a documented history: who reached out, when, what terms were offered and what was refused. Filmmakers should keep the same kind of records for every license, offer, option and distribution negotiation. If a dispute arises years later, a clear timeline is often the strongest evidence you have.
Joint ownership needs a plan. Three of ETRI's patents are co-owned with universities, and all the co-owners joined the suit. When you co-own a script, a format or a film with collaborators, put in writing who can license it, who can enforce it and how the money is split. Without that agreement, one co-owner may be able to block a deal, or the whole team may struggle to act together.
Follow the filings, Disney's response and press coverage on the ETRI v. Disney case page.
This post is editorial commentary on public court filings and news coverage, not legal advice. The plaintiffs' allegations have not been proven, and Disney has not yet responded to the complaint. Details of the licensing history come from press reports summarizing the complaint and may be clarified as the case proceeds.