On September 16, 2019, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial in an IPR filed by Unified against all claims of U.S. Patent 9,838,720, owned by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS). KAIST claims to have and seeks to license patents allegedly essential to the HEVC / H.265 standard (such as the ‘720 patent). Unified filed this challenge as part of its ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone after independently determining that the allegedly standard essential ‘720 patent is likely unpatentable.

The '720 patent and its corresponding extended patent family is one of the largest families known to be owned by KAIST and represents approximately 42.9% of KAIST’s known U.S. assets. Including this petition, Unified has now challenged patents representing 64.3% of KAIST’s total known U.S. assets.

Unified is represented by Akin Gump in this proceeding. Visit Unified’s Portal for more information about its Video Codec landscape (OPAL) and standard submission repository (OPEN). To read the decision and review the proceeding, view IPR2019-00725 on the Portal.

[1] An earlier version of this post incorrectly listed U.S. Patent 9,544,595 (owned by KAIST and ETRI) as the subject of IPR2019-00725. The ‘595 patent has been separately challenged by Unified in IPR2019-01071. This post was updated on September 27, 2019 to reflect the correct patent number.