Another former Velos EP patent successfully challenged at the EPO
On May 19, 2022, all of the original claims of EP 2 347 592 B1, formerly owned by Velos Media, LLC and now owned by Qualcomm, were found unpatentable based on a challenge filed by Unified. Only after several failed attempts to amend the claims was Qualcomm able to gain allowance by adding significant narrowing limitations to the claims. However, the narrowing amendments forced into the claims means that these are no longer standard essential. This filing is a part of Unified's ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone.
Only after several failed attempts to amend was Qualcomm able to gain allowance of significantly narrowed claims. These amendments affect the essentiality of claims. For example, the claims now require “selecting the combination of encoding modes and partitioning with the best rate-distortion cost for the video block.” But the H.264 standard does not specify a particular encoding mode for macroblocks, much less require selection via rate-distortion cost.
Unified was represented at the opposition hearing by Dr. Susan Keston and Dr. Andrew McGettrick of HGF. In-house support was provided by Jessica L.A. Marks and Roshan Mansinghani.