- Dolby Vision HDR is back for Disney+ viewers in Europe
- The feature was removed due to a legal dispute.
- Patent lawsuits are a constant problem for streamers
Disney+ has returned Dolby Vision HDR to European viewers, a month after the feature was removed for many subscribers on the Disney+ app and its Apple Vision Pro 3D movies, which also use Dolby Vision.
Disney originally said the removal was due to “technical challenges,” which many people assumed meant “we’re in the middle of a patent dispute” because Disney+ was in the middle of a patent dispute. And now in a statement, Disney+ has confirmed that yes, the removal was due to a patent dispute.
Speaking to FlatpanelsHD, Disney+ said: “As a result of a lawsuit in a German patent court, we were forced to make changes to the availability of certain advanced video formats in Germany and other markets.” But now Dolby Vision and 3D Vision Pro movies are back.
Article continues below.
If you are one of the affected subscribers, updating the app should fix it.
Where there is a streaming hit, there is a court order
There is a lot of litigation surrounding video streaming: to take just one example, Nokia has filed lawsuits against Amazon, Hisense, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount over video codecs and streaming technology. Disney, Amazon and Netflix have been the subject of video patent litigation, as have all manner of electronics manufacturers.
In this particular court case, the plaintiff was InterDigital, which holds nearly 12,000 patents for video technology alone and, like many of those companies, filed lawsuits in multiple locations: Brazil, California, and in multiple jurisdictions in Germany.
The reason for the lawsuits is that video technologies have many parents. They are typically built on previous technologies, many of which will have been patented by the organizations they came from. That means that a video format like HEVC features hundreds of patents from all kinds of companies, including Sony, Samsung, Mitsubishi, Microsoft, Panasonic, Toshiba, JVCKenwood, and many others.
In technology, patent holders often work together in what is known as a patent pool. It’s not a new idea (the first set of patents was for sewing machines in the 19th century), but it has become important in sectors like streaming, where there are tons of patents related to the technology.
Companies that want to use technology like HEVC can pay a license to use the pool of patents, and that gives them the right to use all of the technology covered by the pool’s patents. You can check out the long list of HEVC licensees here.
Patent owners are very interested in making sure that anyone who uses the technology they have the patents for pays them, and those licenses don’t come cheap: for example, Access Advance’s suite of patents for the HEVC, VVC, AV1, and VP9 codecs costs between $1.167 million per month and $5.25 million per month, depending on the size of the streamer and its audience (although, to be fair, that higher level only applies to a couple of organizations very large).
Reports suggest that some patent owners demand even more: sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
When you see the sums of money involved, it’s no surprise that patent owners are so keen to take streamers to court. The case of Disney+ in Germany was not the first and it certainly will not be the last. But at least the app is back to normal, and the three affected Vision Pro owners should be very happy too.
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