On February 28, 2019, Unified (represented by Baker Botts) filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 6,943,710 as part of its ongoing efforts in its new SEP Video Codec Zone. The '710 patent is owned by GE Video Compression, LLC (GEVC) which is participating in the HEVC Advance patent pool (HEVC Advance patent list).

The ‘710 patent and its corresponding extended patent family is one of the larger families known to be owned by GEVC and represents approximately 5% of GEVC's known worldwide assets. Including this petition, Unified has challenged patents representing over 44% of GEVC’s known U.S. assets to date.

HEVC Advance claims that certain claims of the '710 patent are essential to the HEVC standard. After conducting an independent analysis, Unified has determined that the ‘710 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 IPR2019-00726 on the Portal.