Involving Video Coding Patent Infringement Injunction! Court rejects DivX request

The Amsterdam district court rejected a request by digital video technology company DivX to bring its preliminary judgment into line with a German court's infringement finding, meaning the court would not make the same injunctive statement against Netflix in the Netherlands.

In its dispute with video streaming giant Netflix, DivX's lawsuit in the Netherlands is not going well, Juve Patent reports. The District Court of Amsterdam ruled that it was not obliged to bring its judgment into line with a previous infringement decision of the District Court of Mannheim in Germany (case number: C/13/724642).

It is reported that in April 2022, the German court ruled that Netflix violated two patents of DivX through the high-efficiency video coding (HEVC) part of the platform, so it issued two injunctions against Netflix.

In Dutch procedural law, this so-called consistency rule covers that a judge of interim relief is in principle obliged to bring his judgment into line with a parallel Dutch decision on the merits or with a decision of the European Patent Office. However, the Amsterdam court ruled that this does not automatically apply to foreign judgments. As such, it dismissed DivX's infringement Claim in the Netherlands. The court also ruled that DivX must pay Netflix €80,676 in court costs.