HEVC Advance standard essential patent owned by GE challenged as likely invalid

On January 29, 2019, as part of its ongoing efforts in its new SEP Video Codec Zone, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 9,729,891. The '891 patent is owned by GE Video Compression, LLC (GEVC) which is participating in the HEVC Advance patent pool (HEVC Advance patent list).

The ‘891 patent and its corresponding extended patent family is one of the largest families known to be owned by GEVC and represents approximately 13.6% of GEVC's known U.S. assets. The ’891 patent, originally assigned to Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, was transferred to GEVC in 2015.

HEVC Advance claims that certain claims of the '891 patent are essential to the HEVC standard. After conducting an independent analysis, Unified has determined that the ‘891 patent is likely unpatentable.

Unified is represented by Eric Buresh of Erise IP in this proceeding. Visit Unified’s Public Portal for more information about its Video Codec landscape (OPAL) and standard submission repository (OPEN). To read the petition and review the case record, view IPR2019-00617 on the Portal.