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WBD’s World War P

The streaming boom has been partly enabled by an underappreciated—and potentially incredibly valuable—suite of software, which suddenly has license holders and distributors racing to courthouses across the globe. The future of digital content delivery may hang in the balance. And Warner Bros. Discovery is on the front lines.

David Zaslav HBO Max
As Disney+, Netflix, HBO Max, and others became the primary content delivery systems for video, a new breed of patent holders—backed by deep-pocketed investors and operating outside the old cooperative pools—began arguing that the streamers themselves should be paying royalties for the very technologies that make their platforms possible. Photo: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images
Eriq Gardner
November 18, 2025

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Have you heard about the brain-melting “anti-anti-suit injunction” that Warner Bros. Discovery just won in a U.K. court? The rare and dramatic legal move was taken to gain some high ground in a shadowy patent war that will determine whether streaming platforms must pay staggering new royalties for the technologies that power modern entertainment. It’s the newest flash point in a fight that has been quietly building and only recently erupted into open conflict on the global stage.