On February 1, 2019, Unified filed a petition (with Wilmer Hale serving as lead counsel) for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 8,767,824, owned by Velos Media, LLC (Velos) as part of Unified's ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone.

The ’824 patent and its corresponding extended patent family is one of the larger families known to be owned by Velos.  Velos claims to have and seeks to license patents allegedly essential to the HEVC / H.265 standard. The ’824 patent, originally assigned to Sharp Laboratories of America, was transferred to Velos Media in 2017.

A declaration likely related to the ‘824 patent is available here via OPEN—Unified’s free, fully-searchable standard submission repository.  After conducting an independent analysis, Unified has determined that the ‘824 patent is likely unpatentable.

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 IPR2019-00635 on the Portal.