Three licensors of the HEVC pool — M&K Holdings, Gensquare, and Tagivan II — have filed three lawsuits against Amazon at Düsseldorf Regional Court. This is according to a press release from law firm Cohausz & Florack, which regularly advises Via LA on patent law.

The three pool members had previously sued Microsoft at the same court. A total of seven lawsuits were pending here. However, Via LA and Microsoft reached an agreement in early October.

Via LA has now filed three new lawsuits against Amazon. All are pending before Chamber 4a under presiding judge Tilmann Büttner and have now been served on Amazon, JUVE Patent has learned (case IDs: 4b O 31/25, 4a O 61/25, 4a O 62/25). The cases concern Amazon devices capable of playing 4K content, such as Amazon’s Fire TV and similar products that utilise HEVC technology.

When contacted, the Regional Court of Düsseldorf informed JUVE Patent that Tagivan has filed a lawsuit concerning three patents, while M&K Holdings and Gensquare each filed lawsuits concerning two patents. The court now has the option of splitting individual patents into separate proceedings. It is reasonable to assume they are the patents that Via LA has already asserted against Microsoft.

Amazon has faced an increasing number of patent lawsuits in Europe over the past few months. The US company is currently engaged in an extensive dispute with InterDigital over a licence for its global video coding and decoding portfolio. InterDigital has not yet filed infringement suits, but it did recently obtain two anti-suit injunctions from Munich Regional Court and the UPC local division Mannheim. These prohibit Amazon from seeking an interim licence from another court. The UK High Court responded with an order prohibiting InterDigital from taking action against a RAND-rate determination in the UK.

Via LA teams up again with Düsseldorf attorneys

The Via LA patent pool once more relies on the team around patent attorney Gottfried Schüll from Cohausz & Florack and lawyer Axel Verhauwen from Krieger Mes. Both partners have worked together for the patent pool for many years. They also successfully represented Via LA against Microsoft.

The team also included Cohausz & Florack patent attorneys Christoph Walke, Fabian Vogelbruch, and Henning Sternemann.

Changing of the guard at Amazon?

JUVE Patent does not yet know which law firms will represent Amazon in the new dispute. Hogan Lovells has a long-standing and intensive relationship with the tech giant. In the dispute with InterDigital, the London team is also handling the RAND proceedings.

However, Klaus Haft, partner at Hoyng ROKH Monegier, recently handled Amazon’s defence against the anti-interim-licence injunctions from Mannheim and Munich.