On September 3, 2019, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial in an IPR filed by Unified against all independent claims and several dependent claims of US Patent 8,964,849, owned by Velos Media, LLC. The ’849 patent, generally directed to techniques for video encoding and decoding, was originally assigned to Blackberry before being transferred to Velos in 2017.

Velos claims to have and seeks to license patents allegedly essential to the HEVC / H.265 standard (such as the ‘849 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 ‘849 patent is likely unpatentable.

Unified is represented by David Cavanaugh and Theodoros Konstantakopoulos from Wilmer Hale 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 case record, view IPR2019-00710 on the Portal.