Leading Electronics Company

Oblon has extensively worked on, for a large international company, standards-related applications in the field of digital video encoding and optical storage since 1993 or earlier. This work started with initial steps for forming the MPEG-2 patent pool.

We began our work by investing time to understand the details of the technology, including studying the relevant technical standards. We then worked with the inventors and patent engineers to creatively draft claims that were supported by the originally filed specification, covered the relevant standard and were patentable over the prior art. Based on our initial successes and the trust and confidence that the client had developed in our work, our scope expanded beyond MPEG-2 to subsequent digital video encoding standards and optical disc standards, resulting in more than 400 standards essential patents.

Our work did not end with obtaining standards essential patents. We developed a strategy with the client to obtain non-essential patents that were closely related to the standards, would likely be infringed, and were therefore not subject to FRAND licensing obligations. Once the standards essential patents were obtained, the client relied on us to have the patents accepted as being essential by the relevant Patent Pool evaluator. Through this work, we gained extensive experience in what types of claim elements could cause issues in the patents' being considered essential.