Who all owns HEVC standard essential patents | Report by Scintillation Research

MOHALI, India, Oct. 16, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Scintillation Research has conducted an independent, non-commissioned study on HEVC technology and prepared a detailed report on HEVC essentiality analysis for various stakeholders.

The report offers a comprehensive overview of the HEVC patent landscape, providing detailed insights into its key patents. It aims to identify all granted patents worldwide related to HEVC technology and deliver actionable, reliable information on essential patents to stakeholders, supporting their various campaigns. The report highlights the top assignees and their share of essential patents, examines portfolios within this space, and reviews the history of patent reassignments.

A comprehensive dataset of active, granted worldwide patents was built by covering the newly added features of the HEVC standard.

1. Video Coding
2. Video Encoding
3. Video Decoding
4. Prediction
5. Filtration
6. Bitstream
7. 3D Video Coding
8. Transformation & Quantization
9. Multi-layer Video Coding
10. Block-based Coding
11. CABAC
12. Screen Content Coding

A four-step approach was followed to create a comprehensive patent dataset:

Step 1 : Extract all patents filed by authors or contributors of HEVC standard.

Step 2 : Extract patents listed in the list published by Access Advance as of July 1, 2025.

Step 3 : Extract all patents published by Via Licensing.

Step 4 : Identify patent families using combinations of keywords, CPCs, assignees, and citations, with a focus on the newly added features. We restricted our key strings to a priority date of 'on or before April 13, 2013, to match the approval date of the first version of the HEVC standard.

After combining all results from steps 1-4 and removing irrelevant results, we compiled a list of over 2300 unique patent families.

A detailed manual analysis of each patent family in the list was performed to determine the essentiality of the claims with respect to the H.265 specification.  Our team reviewed each patent family in detail and assessed its essentiality, providing rationale and excerpts from the relevant standards to support their findings. When evidence for each claim limitation was identified in the standard, we mark the family as essential and proceed to the next one. If a particular independent claim is found to be non-essential to the standard due to certain claim limitations, we reviewed the following independent claim for analysis purposes. Further, if no independent claim of that patent was found to be essential, we reviewed the other granted family member for essentiality purposes. We have marked a particular patent family as non-essential only after reviewing all granted family members.

Please note that our team has not conducted a prior art or invalidity search to determine the validity of the essential patents.

Several insights were derived from the analysis and were documented in the report.

Some of the key findings include:

•         Over 1100 patent families are essential to the HEVC standard.

•         Qualcomm has the most HEVC SEPs.

•         104 unique assignees hold at least one HEVC essential patent.

•         About 32% of essential patents are held by the top five assignees.

•         Around 56% of the essential patent families were associated with video decoding and video encoding technology.

•         43 different assignees reassigned 179 patent families.

A complete report is available: Who all owns HEVC SEPs?

An exclusive essentiality analysis report is compiled for certain assignees to offer a comprehensive overview of their HEVC portfolio. This report covers all patent families selected for manual review, along with their essentiality status. Specifically, it includes details such as patent number, priority date, title, evaluated independent claim, essentiality status, reasoning behind the assessment, and relevant excerpts from the standard.

The essentiality report of assignees is accessible as follows: 

1.    Qualcomm

2.    Samsung

3.    JVC Kenwood

4.    Sony

5.    InterDigital

6.    Dolby

7.    Huawei

8.    LG

9.    Nokia

10. MediaTek

11. NTT

12. Sun Patent Trust

13. ETRI

14. Texas Instruments

15. Microsoft

16. Google

17. Toshiba

18. SK Telecom

19. Canon

20. Ericsson

21. Velos Media

22. Orange

About Scintillation Research:

Scintillation Research, founded in 2010, is a patent consultancy firm that provides patent prosecution, litigation, and monetization support services to a diverse range of stakeholders worldwide. We serve Fortune 500 companies, law firms, brokerage firms, inventors, universities, and consulting firms globally. Our core services include strategic prosecution support, patent landscape analysis, competitive advantage reports, competitor intelligence, portfolio mining, essentiality evaluation, claim charts, infringement searches, freedom-to-operate (FTO) analysis, product reverse engineering, and prior-art searches. Our offerings deliver comprehensive solutions across all technology sectors, ensuring clients receive customized support and innovative insights. To learn more about our services, please feel free to contact us at: info@sraas.com

To find out more, visit www.scintillationresearch.com or follow us on LinkedIn

Contact:

Arvind Kumar
VP Sales, Scintillation Research
31, 10^th Floor, TDI Business Center
Mohali, India
Email: arvind.kumar@sraas.com

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