GEVC patent in SISVEL AV1 pool appears not essential

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.

Litigation Funding Disclosure and Patent Litigation

In an article slated for publication in the Federal Circuit Bar Journal, Sean Keller, J.D. Candidate at Texas A&M University School of Law, and Jonathan Stroud, GC at Unified Patents, have written about the growing policy debate surrounding litigation financing disclosures.

Litigation financing is one of the most significant developments in modern litigation. Since at least the 1990s, litigation financing steadily expanded in the United States and has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry. Litigation funding—providing third-party non-recourse funding contingent upon litigation recovery and outcomes—is a modern phenomenon of relatively recent vintage that nonetheless undergirds huge swaths of U.S. civil litigation today. And one of the biggest recent beneficiaries of litigation financing has been patent litigation.

Modern patent litigation, being high-stakes, arm’s-length, and Federal in nature, is both a high-risk, high-reward prospect for litigation funding. Studies show that up to a third of all modern patent litigation is now funded, making it the highest-growth area in litigation funding; the prevalence of litigation shell companies and other procedural quirks in patent litigation present potential advantages and challenges in employing funding. As it grows into a major feature of the U.S. litigation landscape, several academics, advocacy groups, policymakers, and practitioners have raised concerns about the lack of transparency in litigation financing, given there are comprehensive rules or practices surrounding disclosure of the existence and terms of such arrangements.

Historically, litigation funding regulation in the U.S. had been barred at common law and thereafter has been largely left to the states and their legislatures, resulting in a messy patchwork of disclosure requirements. State courts, legislatures, and judges have offered piecemeal approaches that often conflict. To remedy this in other contexts, the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Civil Rules has debated adding disclosure requirements to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures, resulting years ago in Rule 7.1 and its minimal upfront corporate disclosures, as well as an insurance disclosure requirement into the FRCP. Both debates at the time were akin to the current debate about litigation financing disclosure requirements. Nevertheless, advocates have resisted comparisons between insurance and litigation financing disclosures. We tackle this comparison head-on by deconstructing some of the arguments disclosure opponents have cited to undermine the comparison. We conclude that arguments for enhanced disclosure are sensible, overdue, and inevitable; indeed, in many courts and some agencies, they are already here. Clear, focused Federal disclosure requirements would go a long way to preventing an unenforceable patchwork of state regulations, and would prevent enforcement that is under- or over-inclusive.

The article can be accessed on SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4527378

Unified Submits Comments on ANPRM That Would Restrict PTAB Access and Promote NPE Litigation

On June 20, 2023, Unified Patents submitted its comments to the USPTO’s Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“ANPRM”) regarding proposed changes to PTAB practice. The proposed rules largely exceed the USPTO’s authority, contradict the America Invents Act, would harm the U.S. economy, and promote increased NPE litigation. The USPTO's ANPRM can be found here. A copy of Unified's submission can be found below.

DOWNLOAD UNIFIED’S COMMENTS HERE

Patent Office Proposals Put the American Economy at Risk

In an op-ed for RealClearPolicy, Unified’s CEO and Founder, Kevin Jakel, explains how the USPTO’s Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) could put the American economy at risk and limit access to government patent review for all. Many ANPRM proposals aim to restrict petitions for review of invalid patents. This would limit the work done by Unified, other third parties, and companies targeted by NPEs, which will lead to small and medium-sized businesses becoming vulnerable to increased NPE threats.

Click HERE to read more on RealClearPolicy's website.

The USPTO Needs Your Input Now - Help Fight NPEs

You can help support our economy, reduce wasteful NPE litigation, and stop the assertion of bad patents. All it takes is a few minutes of your time.  

The USPTO has issued a set of proposed rules, nearly all of which will make it harder for everyone, including Unified, to challenge bad patents. Examples include the invalid Shipping and Transit or Sportbrain patents, which collectively were asserted over 400 times and sparked over a thousand demand letters. Many of the new proposed rules are outside of the USPTO’s authority and plainly contradict statutes that Congress put in place and the Courts have opined on.

By placing a heavy thumb on the scale in favor of NPEs, these proposals will raise already-high litigation costs for all parties, weaken the Patent Trial and Appeals Board, and seek to stop Unified from challenging particularly bad, invalid patents. Patents that slipped through the system and should have never been issued in the first place will be asserted against American companies, particularly medium and small-sized businesses. Studies show that even a handful of these proposals would cost many hundreds of millions of dollars.   

The USPTO has asked for a limited window in which to get the public’s input, so time is of the essence. Please let the USPTO know you want a fair and open system for all, where anyone can petition the government for review of an invalid patent. That is what Congress put in place, and what the Article III Courts have blessed. This administrative agency should not be trying to overrule them. 

You can take action by selecting the green box, titled “Submit a formal comment” (here), and sharing your thoughts, however brief. All comments are due by June 20, 2023, 11:59 PM EST. It is of critical importance that the USPTO hears from real stakeholders like you.