After TCL and Transsion, NEC sues Hisense again over HEVC patents

Aug 20, 2025——NEC Corporation has filed a lawsuit against Hisense and several affiliated companies at the UPC Mannheim LD for infringing HEVC/H.265 patents on Aug 7, 2025. This was on the same day that ETRI sued Hisense, except that ETRI initiated the lawsuit at the UPC Düsseldorf LD.

EP3057321, titled "Video decoding device, video decoding method, and program", with case number ACT_34324/2025.

EP2645714, titled "Video decoding device, video decoding method, and program", with case number ACT_34322/2025

NEC's counsel is Bardehle Pagenberg’s Dr. Tilman Müller, who also represented for ETRI.

On July 16, 2025, PRIP reported that NEC filed a lawsuit with the UPC Mannheim LD, accusing Transsion of infringing its patents EP3057321 (“Video decoding device, video decoding method, and program“, case no.ACT_26612/2025) and EP2645714 (Video decoding device, video decoding method, and program, case no.ACT_26601/2025) related to video codec technology.

Last year, TCL filed a counterclaim for revocation of this patent, after being sued by NEC in 2023. Ultimately, a settlement was reached through TCL joining the HEVC patent pool.

NEC is also the third rival that Hisense has encountered in Europe, following Nokia and ETRI.