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The Japan Intellectual Property High Court has affirmed the revocations of two patents, JP6768017 and JP6768110, owned by Xylene. The two patents are related to patents purportedly essential to HEVC Advance patent pool and SISVEL’s VP9 and AV1 patent pools.
Unified was represented by Ace-ai IP Law Firm in Japan, and by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks.
On July 3, 2025, the EPO's appellate board confirmed the decision to revoke EP 3151566. The EP ‘566 patent is owned by GE Video Compression, LLC. The EP ’566 patent is part of a family purportedly essential to HEVC and part of the Access Advance patent pool. This filing is a part of Unified’s ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone.
Unified was represented by Dr. Andrew McGettrick and Dr. Susan Keston of HGF Law, and by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and Roshan Mansinghani.
On May 9, 2025, the EPO's appellate board confirmed the decision to revoke EP 2627085. The EP ‘085 patent was owned by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). The patent was related to patents that are designated essential to the Access Advance patent pool as well as SISVEL’s AV1 patent pool.
Unified was represented by Dr. Andrew McGettrick and Dr. Susan Keston at HGF Law, and by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and Roshan Mansinghani.
The Beijing Intellectual Property Court found all claims of two Chinese patents, CN103384333B and CN104219523B, invalid after the patent owner, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), filed an appeal. The CN’333 and CN’523 patents 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 is represented by Tao Chen, Yu Yan, and Peter Zhang at Wei Chixue Law Firm, and the case is managed by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and Roshan Mansinghani.
As part of an ongoing series examining the patent holders and pools erroneously designating patents as essential, we highlight U.S. Patent 10,460,344 titled “Region merging and coding parameter reuse via merging.” This patent is owned by GE Video Compression (GEVC). GEVC has designated the ’344 patent as essential to the AV1 standard as a part of SISVEL’s AV1 Patent Pool. See AV1 Patent List, AV1 Family AV1-040, available at https://www.sisvel.com/images/documents/Video-Coding-Platform/PatentList_AV1.pdf.
GEVC’s U.S. Patent 10,460,344 should not be considered to be essential to the AV1 standard. The ’344 patent is directed to a decoder that uses a merging or grouping of simply connected regions using a reduced amount of data. ’344 patent, Abstract. Namely, a merge indicator indicates whether a region currently being decoded should be reconstructed based on a motion coding parameter. If the indicator indicates copying, the appropriate vector is copied. If the indicator indicates compute, the appropriate motion vector is computed. Id., claims 1, 9, 17, 26.
The concept of a merge indicator is an evolved form of motion vector competition. See, e.g., Joel Jung and Guillaume Laroche, “Competition-Based Scheme for Motion Vector Selection and Coding,” VCEG Contribution VCEG-AC06r1, Klagenfurt, Austria, July 2006. In contrast to the ’344 patent and prior motion vector competition literature, the AV1 standard does not employ a merge indicator; rather, the concepts of merging and computing a motion vector is spread over multiple values, not merely an indicator to either copy the ap or compute the motion vector. See, e.g., AV1 §§ 5.11.26 (assign_mv syntax code used to limit the maximum size of motion vectors); 5.11.23 (syntax); 6.10.22 (semantics describing new_mv, zero_mv, and ref_mv);.
Thus, the ’344 patent does not appear to be essential to the AV1 standard despite being declared as essential. The public would benefit from appropriate scrutiny of patent pools that allegedly cover critical technical standards, particularly open-source standards such as AV1.
