1st European challenge by an independent entity against an NPE

Unified believes patent quality is not just a U.S. issue but an international one. For those reasons, on July 17, 2020, Unified filed opposition proceedings against recently issued EP 2 347 591 B1, owned by Velos Media, LLC. The ‘591 patent is generally related to decoding data using macroblocks. This filing is a part of Unified's ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone.

In mid-July, Velos announced Technicolor as their first public HEVC patent licensee. However, in June, Technicolor declared bankruptcy in the U.S. because of higher than expected costs and lower revenue.

The ‘591 patent is also part of a family that Unified challenged and the PTAB instituted review on all claims as likely unpatentable, IPR2019-00757. This family is one of Velos’ largest and originally owned by Qualcomm. 

Read the entire filing below. Unified is represented by Dr. Simon Q. Lud, European Patent Attorney at Maiwald Intellectual Property, and by in-house counsel, Jonathan Stroud and Ashraf Fawzy.