Two Chinese ETRI video codec patents held invalid after appeals

After the China National IP Administration (CNIPA) invalidated the patents in administrative proceedings, and the Beijing IP Court upheld that invalidation, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) filed a second appeal to China's Supreme People's Court. On April 30, 2026, Unified Patents received two judgements where China’s Supreme People's Court upheld the original invalidations on CN103384333B and CN104219523B.

CN'333 and CN‘523 were generally directed to applying the same prediction mode to a unidirectional series of blocks and are related to patents that are designated essential to the Access Advance (formerly known as HEVC Advance) patent pool, as well as, SISVEL’s AV1 and VP9 patent pools.

Unified was represented by Tao Chen, Yu Yan, and Peter Zhang at Wei Chixue Law Firm, and the case was managed by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and Roshan Mansinghani.

Ideahub (former ETRI) HEVC patent revocation confirmed by EPO appeal

On November 6, 2025, the EPO Board of Appeals confirmed the complete revocation of all claims of EP 3402195. The EP ‘195 patent is currently owned by Ideahub Inc. but was previously owned by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI). The EP ‘195 patent involves improving the efficiency of encoding and decoding methods with particular reference to determining quantization parameters for encoding and decoding object blocks such that the quantization parameters are adaptively set according to prevailing or neighboring conditions. It is related to patents that have been declared essential to Access Advance and SISVEL’s AV1 patent pool.

Unified is represented by Dr. Andrew McGettrick and Dr. Susan Keston at HGF Law, and by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and Roshan Mansinghani.

ETRI video codec patent revocation remains in place

On October 13, 2025, the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) withdrew their appeal of the EPO decision to revoke EP 3767952, canceling the hearing scheduled for November 11, 2025. Thus, the EP '952 stands revoked in its entirety. The EP ‘952 patent relates to an apparatus for encoding image data and an apparatus for decoding image data, where the encoding/decoding makes use of motion vector coding for image compression, particularly an inter prediction method. It is related to patents that have been designated essential to the Access Advance patent pool and has also been identified as potentially essential to the Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard.

Unified was represented by Owain Summers, Andrew McGettrick, and Susan Keston at HGF Law and by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and Roshan Mansinghani.

Another ETRI HEVC patent revoked in EPO

On June 6, 2024, the European Patent Office announced the revocation of all claims of EP 2672708. The EP ‘708 patent is owned by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI). The patent is related to patents that have been declared essential to Access Advance and SISVEL’s AV1 and VP9 patent pools. The claims are generally directed to video coding/decoding methods and apparatuses that use a clipped motion vector.

Unified is represented by Owain Staines and Susan Keaton at HGF Law and by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and Roshan Mansinghani.

ETRI HEVC patent revoked in EPO

On January 24, 2024, the European Patent Office announced the revocation of all claims of EP 3767952. The EP ‘952 patent, owned by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), relates to an apparatus for encoding image data and an apparatus for decoding image data, where the encoding/decoding makes use of motion vector coding for image compression, particularly an inter prediction method. It is related to patents that have been designated essential to the Access Advance patent pool and has also been identified as potentially essential to the Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard.

Unified is represented by Harry Hutchinson and Owain Summers at HGF Law and by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and Roshan Mansinghani.