Rio Court Orders Hisense to Drop HEVC in Brazil Within Five Days in InterDigital Video Codec Fight
Brazil has become one of the sharpest tools in standard essential patent (SEP) enforcement, and a new order from Rio de Janeiro shows why. Judge Simone Gastesi Chevrand, who sits in Rio's 7th Business Court, signed a preliminary injunction on 27 October 2026 in InterDigital's case against Hisense and its local partner Multilaser. The order, made public by ip fray on 30 October, gives Hisense five days to stop using the optional H.265/HEVC video format in devices sold in Brazil. If it does not comply, a daily penalty of R$100,000 (roughly US$19,000) applies.
The ruling arrived only days after another Rio business court granted InterDigital a similar injunction against TCL on the same two patents. Brazilian filings list them as PI 0305518-3 and PI 0318819-1, both tied to video coding standards.
What the judge decided
The core of the order is about negotiating conduct, not technology. The judge found that Hisense's FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) defence could not block interim relief because Hisense had never put a serious counter-offer on the table, even though talks between the companies had run for close to ten years. She leaned on the sequence of steps set out by the EU's top court in Huawei v ZTE: the patent holder makes an offer, and an implementer who wants to rely on FRAND must answer with a concrete counter-proposal. Asking a judge to fix the royalty instead, she said in effect, is not a substitute for negotiating.
Much of the technical work came from a court-appointed expert report already used in the TCL case. On that basis, the judge accepted at this early stage that the asserted claims read on the standards and that the invalidity attacks were not strong enough to stop an injunction. She saw a contradiction in Hisense's position: it denied that the patents were essential or infringed while also admitting it uses AVC and HEVC in its televisions and asking the court to set a FRAND rate.
The order is also unusually blunt about litigation style. The original defence ran to 185 pages, which the judge called a "trial by avalanche". She had ordered a summary, and described that shorter version as one that "borders on an insult to the Court". She held back from fining Hisense for delay but warned it to change course.
Procedural points that matter beyond this case
Hisense asked the court to step aside in favour of two other Brazilian proceedings on the same patents: a declaratory action filed in São Paulo by Amazon in September 2025, and InterDigital's suit against TCL, filed nine minutes before the Hisense complaint. The judge refused both requests. In her view, infringement is assessed separately for each alleged infringer, so related cases elsewhere do not take a matter away from the court that first received it.
She also declined to bring in CADE, Brazil's competition authority, describing the matter as a private dispute between well-advised companies. Hisense's own counterclaim may proceed, but its request for interim relief was refused, and the judge signalled that a decision on the merits is not far off.
Why this matters
For SEP owners, Brazil now offers speed: two injunctions against major TV brands within a week, both resting heavily on one expert report. For implementers, the lesson is practical. A FRAND defence that consists of disputing everything, without a written counter-offer and some form of security, is unlikely to persuade a Brazilian court. The cases also show how rate disputes over mature codecs, where InterDigital is reported to have offered about US$0.10 per unit for AVC and US$0.20 for HEVC, can turn into a market access question in a single large country.
The Indonesian angle
Indonesia's TV and smartphone market is supplied largely by the same Chinese and Korean brands that face these campaigns, and local assemblers often license codecs through their suppliers. Indonesian patent law allows provisional court orders, but SEP disputes have rarely been tested here. Local manufacturers and importers should check who in the supply chain holds video codec licences, and keep records of any licensing talks, including counter-offers. If an SEP holder ever seeks interim relief in Jakarta, the Brazilian reasoning shows that silence in negotiations can weigh heavily against the implementer.
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