Broadcom is trumpeting another legal victory in its IP fight with Netflix in Germany, announcing that the German Federal Patent Court has issued a preliminary opinion that a Broadcom patent related to HEVC/H.265 video encoding is valid.

The declaration comes after a Munich court ruled in September that Netflix's use of HEVC,  a codec used for transporting 4K video also known as H.265, violates Broadcom's "'366" patent. 

Netflix apparently didn't abide by the Munich court's injunction, so Broadcom sought the Federal Patent Court ruling. Broadcom said it also filed a motion with the Munich court, seeking penalties for Netflix's alleged violation of its patent. 

"Under section 890 of the German Civil Procedure Code, penalties for violating the injunction include: (1) government fines of up to €250,000 for each act of infringement, such as each time Netflix sends an infringing video stream to a German subscriber; and/or (2) up to six month’s imprisonment for members of the infringer’s board of directors," Broadcom says in its press release announcing the Patent Court decision. 

The German Federal Patent Court is scheduled to give a final ruling on the matter on July 18, 2024, after hearing oral arguments. 

Netflix has yet to publicly comment on the injunction.

Netflix and Broadcom have been beefing since 2018, with the video tech company also contesting Dutch and U.S. patents related to HEVC. And it's likely not the last patent dispute we'll see tied to use of HEVC. 

Within its Europe/Middle East/Africa region quadrant, Germany is Netflix's second largest market next to the UK, with over 10 million paid users in 2021, according to Statista. 

Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) continues to be the preferred streaming format around the globe, with 82% of video developers worldwide currently using the format, up 4% from 2017, according to Bitmovin’s latest annual Video Developer Report (PDF).

Usage of the format is particularly high in Latin America, where 95% of video developers have adopted the format. (The adoption rate in North America is 77%.)

Adoption of MPEG-DASH is also increasing, up 5% worldwide to 61% of developers worldwide, according to Bitmovin.

Meanwhile, in terms of video codecs, H.264/AVC is used by 92% of developers worldwide, down 3% from Bitmovin’s 2017 report. Usage of H.265/HEVC, however, has grown to 42% of video developers from 28% last year. Over a third of respondents (36%) plan to deploy H.265/HEVC in the next 12 months.

In terms of platform support, HTML5 in browser was reported to be the top supported platform, with 92% of respondents indicating support. Among consumer OTT devices, Google’s Chromecast is supported by 42% of developers vs. 36% for Apple TV, 34% for Android TV and 23% for Roku.

Surveying 456 video developers at broadcasters, publishers, OTT streaming services, online video platforms and social media platforms in 67 countries, Bitmovin found that latency remains the top complaint among developers.

Around 55% of developers reported latency with their platform—a problem when trying to perform tasks such as streaming live sports.