Intellectual Property

On Thursday, plaintiff DigiMedia Tech, LLC filed a complaint in the District of Delaware against Lenovo (United States) Inc. and Motorola Mobility LLC for patent infringement, alleging that the defendants infringed the plaintiff’s video compression patents via smartphones with video cameras.

The patents-in-suit are United States Patent No. 6,473,532 (the ’532 patent); 6,741,250 (the ’250 patent); 6,744,818 (the ’818 patent); and 6,684,220 (the ’220 patent).

The ’532 patent, entitled, “Method and Apparatus for Visual Lossless Image Syntactic Encoding” relates to “providing a visually lossless video compression method and apparatus” via encoding, which is used “for storing video in a compressed format, where the compression does not reduce the quality of the video in a visually detectable manner.”

DigiMedia Tech alleged that the defendants “have been and are now making, using, selling, offering for sale, and/or importing products that incorporate one or more of the inventions claimed in the ’532 patent.” DigiMedia Tech averred that the defendants infringed at least claim 6 of the ’532 patent in connection with, for example, the MotoG7 Power smartphone with video recording products.

According to the claim chart, the MotorG7 allegedly infringes at least claim 6 of the ’532 patent because it has “visual lossless encoding of frames of a video signal” as videos “shot on the Motorola G7 Power in 4K and 1080p resolution at 30fps get saved in a rather standard configuration of a 17-ish Mbps AVC video feed….” The plaintiff noted that the “(q)uality is actually good quality with plenty of detail for the class, high contrast, and lively colors.” Moreover, the “H.264 video is encoded with ‘Constant Rate Factor’ (CRF) of ~16, from bit rate of ( ) 17 M(bps) and 1080p.” The plaintiff stated that a “CFR of 16 or better is ‘visually lossless.’” Furthermore, the accused product allegedly infringed by “spatially and temporally separating and analyzing details of said frames”; specifically, the “(e)ncoding algorithms…may select between inter and intra coding for blocking shaped regions of each picture.”

DigiMedia Tech proffered that the defendants infringed by utilizing the patented claims without authorization or a license. As a result, DigiMedia Tech contended that it has been harmed and damaged by this aforementioned conduct.

The plaintiff has sought declaratory relief, an award for damages, pre and post judgment interest, and other relief. DigiMedia Tech is represented by Stamoulis & Weinblatt as well as Kent & Risley.

Source: https://lawstreetmedia.com/tech/lenovo-motorola-sued-for-video-compression-patent-infringement/