Streaming Coalition Urges Squires to Support Enforcement Against Abusive SEP Licensing Practices

A coalition of ten streaming, broadcasting, and audiovisual media organizations, including the Motion Picture Association (MPA) and the Streaming Innovation Alliance, sent a letter today to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director John Squires, urging him to “support strong public and private sector enforcement against abusive SEP licensing practices.” The signatories said that abuse of standard essential patents (SEPs) was undercutting the open process of setting standards for the video streaming technologies their members use.

In December 2025, the USPTO established an SEP Working Group that reports directly to Director Squires. The agency said the group would continue its practice of filing court statements supporting SEP injunctions, such as the statement of interest filed in Radian Memory Systems v. Samsung Electronics in June 2025.

The remaining signatories were the Association of Commercial Television and Video on Demand Services in Europe, the Commercial On-Demand and Broadcasting Association, Strima, the Asociación Española de Video on Demand, the European Video On Demand Coalition, Streaming for Australia, Streamingdiensten Nederland and the Television Association of Programmers Latin America. If left unaddressed, the letter said SEP abuse would harm consumers and competition, significantly affect investment in local creative economies, “misappropriate millions” intended for creative content and new offerings, and lower the quality of the viewing experience.

Standardized codec technologies such as AVC and HEVC allow competing streamers to provide dependable, high-quality video on devices from many manufacturers, the signatories explained. Since inclusion in a standard enhances a patent’s market power by requiring every potential competitor to license the technology, the coalition wrote, SEPs must be licensed on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms.

According to the coalition, a growing list of SEP holders, many of which it said invest primarily in lawyers and litigation, had abandoned that principle for video streaming standards. These SEP holders commit to FRAND licensing to convince standards bodies, such as the International Organization for Standardization and the International Telecommunications Union, to incorporate their patented technology into industry standards, and then “once the standard is widely adopted, they renege on that promise and demand excessive royalties on threat of an injunction,” the letter stated. The coalition said those injunctions result from lawsuits filed in a handful of jurisdictions that routinely grant them without prompt review of the asserted patents’ validity or before a final infringement determination.

The signatories described this conduct as a “bait-and-switch patent ‘holdup’” affecting streamers bound to a standard for years, noting that AVC and HEVC were published in 2003 and 2013, respectively. According to the letter, the practice imposes large costs by destabilizing streaming technology standards, raising consumer prices, potentially diminishing commercial offerings and chilling streaming innovation while the industry remains in lengthy litigation.

The coalition stated that “the threat isn’t theoretical,” pointing to advisory FRAND royalty guidelines recently issued by a European court, identified in the letter’s footnotes as the Munich Regional Court. “Without any supporting evidence,” the letter said, the court proposed an annual codec royalty for two leading subscription video on demand (SVOD) services at 16% of one-third of annual subscription revenues, increasing to 25% for premium services. The signatories cited a Statista figure projecting nearly $100 billion in global SVOD revenues for 2026 and said that applying only the lower rate across the industry would drain well over $5 billion from the entertainment sector.

The 7th Civil Chamber of the Munich Regional Court I published the guidelines on August 13, 2026, building on recent decisions including ASUS I, ASUS II, Renault and ZTE v. Samsung. The guidelines reflect only that chamber’s views, and other courts may reach different conclusions.

All signatories support the protection of intellectual property (IP) rights, the coalition stated, adding that “it is precisely because we take IP rights so seriously” that they object to holdup tactics. The signatories said those tactics far exceed the value of the underlying patents, raise competition concerns, and damage the reputation of IP rights. The letter also referenced an amicus curiae brief the MPA submitted to the U.S. District Court in Delaware, which it said explained the conduct in detail.

That brief was filed in Disney Enterprises, Inc. v. InterDigital, Inc., an antitrust lawsuit Disney filed in August 2025 alleging that InterDigital’s licensing practices for video compression patents violated Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act.

According to the letter, these SEP holders’ conduct is “cultivating a new generation of opponents for the IP community,” including car makers, TV manufacturers, healthcare providers and farmers. The signatories said they need to facilitate a FRAND licensing framework that respects IP rights and allows the streaming ecosystem to benefit creators, innovators, consumers, and IP rights holders. The coalition urged Director Squires to support public and private sector enforcement against abusive SEP licensing practices.