On February 28, 2019, Unified filed a petition (with WilmerHale serving as lead counsel) for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 8,964,849, owned by Velos Media, LLC and previously owned by Blackberry, as part of Unified's ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone.

The '849 patent and its corresponding extended patent family is one of the larger families known to be owned by Velos. Including this petition, Unified has now challenged patents representing 21.8% of Velos’ total known U.S. assets.

Velos claims to have and seeks to license patents allegedly essential to the HEVC / H.265 standard. The ’849 patent is part of a family of patents that were originally assigned to Blackberry Ltd. and transferred to Velos Media in 2019.  After conducting an independent analysis, Unified has determined that the ‘849 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 IPR2019-00710 on the Portal.