On January 16, 2025, Access Advance LLC announced the launch of its Video Distribution (VDP) Pool, developed in response to a growing industry demand for a unified solution to codec licensing in the video streaming and distribution sector. The VDP Pool aims to simplify access to patents essential to the distribution of encoded video content, complementing Access Advance’s existing High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and Versatile Video Coding (VVC) patent pools.
What is a patent pool?
A patent pool is a licensing agreement where multiple patent holders combine their patents and offer them as a single package, often through a centralized platform. This simplifies access to technologies that rely on multiple standard essential patents (SEPs) and reduces legal and licensing costs. Pools typically support widely used standards and operate under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms.
Access Advance and the VDP Pool
Access Advance LLC is a U.S.-based patent pool administrator that manages licensing programs for video compression and distribution technologies. It acts as a middleman between patent owners and companies that use those technologies. A common advantage of licensing pools like those of Access Advance is that by bundling SEPs, implementers get an easier and more cost-effective access to technologies without having to deal with multiple separate agreements.
Founded in 2015 as HEVC Advance to license patents essential to the HEVC standard, the organization rebranded in 2020 as Access Advance to reflect its broader scope, including the VVC Advance Patent Pool for VVC.
The VDP Pool offers a “one-stop-shop” licensing framework covering patents essential to four major video codecs: HEVC, VVC, AOMedia Video 1 (AV1), and VP9. Royalties apply only to the codecs in use, and pricing is tiered and fixed based on factors like active users or revenue, offering predictability for implementers. The pool also includes a small-service credit for entities below a specified royalty threshold and implements measures to avoid potential duplicate royalties in cases of overlapping licenses.
Among the four codecs offered, the company lists SEP pools for HEVC (H.265) and VVC (H.266) video compression technologies, while the official SEP list for the remaining codecs are yet to be revealed. HEVC (H.265) is an international video codec standard that offers improved compression efficiency over AVC (H.264), supporting higher-quality video at lower bitrates. VVC (H.266), on the other hand, is an international standard released in 2020 that provides further efficiency gains and supports advanced formats such as 8K, VR, and 360-degree video. AV1 and VP9 are open-source video codecs developed to support high-efficiency compression, with VP9 enabling up to 4K resolution and AV1 offering greater compression, support for HDR, and enhanced streaming features.
In this article, we start off by examining the patents within Access Advance’s HEVC and VVC patent pools. Our analysis focuses only on U.S. patents related to video streaming, i.e. patents categorized as “Encoder” and “Bitstream” in the patent list. Patents categorized as “decoder” are excluded from the dataset. We also look into the technologies used in encoding with HEVC and VVC, and their role within the context of video compression standards.
Access Advance HEVC/VVC Pools: Patenting Activity
U.S. patent filing trends among patents included in Access Advance’s HEVC and VVC pool show a gradual increase from 2015, reaching its highest point in 2020. This peak coincides with the finalization of the VVC standard by the Joint video Experts Team (JVET) in July 2020. That same year, the company transitioned from HEVC Advance to Access Advance, and released a draft overview of its planned VVC licensing program, positioned as an extension of its existing HEVC platform. During this period, additional companies, including Huawei and OPPO, joined the HEVC Patent Pool, contributing to the expansion of the pool’s membership.
Starting 2021, filings related to the technologies began to decline, likely from the shift in attention to the implementation of licensing programs and portfolio management, which was realized with the launch of the VVC Video Patent Pool in July 2021. Activity slightly increased in 2022 , likely from the addition of licensors such as Fujitsu and NEC Corporation.
Access Advance HEVC/VVC Pools: Top Licensors
Access Advance has pooled a number of SEPs from various organizations involved in video compression technologies. These contributors come from a wide range of sectors, including research and tech firms, consortium-based licensing entities, and electronics companies. This reflects the broad industry participation in developing and protecting video protection standards. Leading the list of licensors for both HEVC and VVC is Electronics & Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), followed by Dolby Laboratories and ByteDance. LG and Sun Patent Trust appear next in the ranking with equal numbers of filings.
Access Advance HEVC/VVC Pools: Top Law Firms
NSIP Law leads all law firms in handling U.S. patents related to HEVC and VVC, representing the majority of SEPs assigned to South Korean entities–most notably ETRI. Wenderoth, Lind & Ponack ranks second, primarily representing Panasonic’s SEPs. Klarquist Sparkman follows, with most of its SEP filings originating from Microsoft. Perkins Coie and Fish & Richardson take the next positions, representing SEPs from ByteDance and LG, respectively. These highlight the involvement of law firms engaged in the preparation and prosecution of patent filings related to HEVC and VVC licensing programs over the ten-year period.
Access Advance HEVC/VVC Pools: Top Technology Areas
Majority of the technologies under the patent pool are classified under H04N, which pertains to the transmission of images. This classification aligns with the focus of the patent pool on video streaming and compression technologies. This is followed by the G06T, which covers methods related to visual data handling, including image generation, processing, and transformation – functions that support various aspects of video encoding workflows. H03M appears next, encompassing coding, decoding, and code conversion. This classification is also relevant to the streaming of video, as it includes processes involved in encoding images and converting them into bitstream for transmission.
SEPs behind HEVC and VVC encoding and bitstream
The current HEVC and VVC patent pools on encoding and bitstreams, now possibly being integrated under Access Advance’s VDP Pool, bring together a wide array of innovations that enable efficient and high-quality video compression. These SEPs cover core technologies used in reducing data rates while maintaining video fidelity–making them vital for today’s streaming and content delivery platforms.
In this section, we take a closer look at specific patents from the top assignees that contribute to the technical foundation of HEVC and VVC encoding, including those related to bitstream conversion of both codecs, as reflected in their existing patent portfolio.
Fundamentals in HEVC encoding
Advanced Video Coding (AVC) (H.254) has been the standard codec since 2004. However, it struggles with maintaining quality at lower bitrates. It produces larger file sizes, which increases storage and bandwidth demands. These limitations led to the development of a more efficient standard designed to address modern video encoding, which is HEVC.
U.S. Patent No. 9,756,330, from Dolby Laboratories, describes a method for dynamically subdividing image blocks based on the complexity of the content. By analyzing the texture, such as pictures, or other characteristics (sample arrays) of a block, the encoder can adjust partition shapes and sizes to better match the structure of the video, compressing the video while maintaining fidelity, and avoiding unnecessary subdivisions of other regions.
The method includes analyzing reference blocks to determine suitable partitioning strategies. Information about the selected partition is then signaled in the bitstream so that the decoder could reconstruct the block structure accordingly. A key component of the method is the use of quantization, applied after transformation to reduce precision while maintaining perceptual quality. The quantized coefficients are then encoded using entropy coding techniques and included in the bitstream, contributing to overall compression efficiency.
The patent also includes an encoder that is configured to process a block of a depth or disparity map associated with a texture picture. Using either edge detection or thresholding, the system segments a co-located reference block in the image based on texture features to create a bi-segmentation of the block in two partitions. This segmentation is then spatially transferred to the corresponding depth/disparity block, which is encoded using the resulting partitions.
The encoder also evaluates the dispersion of sample values within the reference block of the texture picture and encodes a coding option identifier into the data stream. If the dispersion exceeds a defined threshold, the identifier is used to index into the first set of coding options, leading to segmentation, spatial transfer, and partition-based encoding. If the dispersion is below the threshold, the identifier selects an option from the second set, resulting in an alternative encoding approach.
The patent, titled ”Adaptive partition coding” was filed on May 9, 2014 and was granted on September 5, 2017, with Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman as the representative. Philipp Merkle, Christian Bartnik, Haricharan Lakshman, Detlev Marpe, Karsten Mueller, Thomas Wiegand, and Gerhard Tech are listed as the inventors.
Formatting in HEVC bitstreams
Another essential step in video streaming involves converting the encoded data into a bitstream. U.S. Patent No. 10,904,569 not only covers encoding and decoding methods but also describes a technique for transmitting the encoded information from the encoder to the decoder via bitstream generation.
In the final stage of the encoding process, an entropy encoder processes the information during the encoding and quantization steps to produce the bitstream. This step involves reducing the number of bits used to represent frequently occurring symbols, which makes the bitstream more compact. Symbols that occur less are represented with longer bit patterns, allowing for more efficient use of space. Various entropy encoding methods can be used to achieve this compression, including exponential Golomb coding, Context-Adaptive Variable Length Coding (CAVLC), and Context-Adaptive Binary Arithmetic Coding (CABAC).
The bitstream generated through entropy encoding contains the necessary syntax elements and encoded values in a compressed form. This enables efficient storage and transmission while preserving the required information for accurate reconstruction during the decoding process.
U.S. Patent No. 10,904,569 was filed on August 21, 2019, and was granted on January 26, 2021 to ETRI. Alan Cantor, Wonki Park, Deborah Gladstein, et al from NSIP Law are the representatives of this patent. The listed inventors are Jin Ho Lee, Hui Yong Kim, Sung Chang Lim, Jin Soo Choi, and Jin Woong Kim.
Encoding innovations in the VVC standard
With the growing demand of modern media consumption, VVC was created as an improvement from HEVC to deliver higher compression efficiency. U.S. Patent No. 10,939,128 discloses a video encoding apparatus designed to enhance chroma prediction using an intra prediction technique called cross-component linear model (CCLM). The method specifically targets chroma blocks, which represent the color information in a video frame, and improves compression efficiency by accurately modeling their relationship with the luma block that carry brightness information.
To perform this conversion, the apparatus first determines parameters of the CCLM based on specific statistical references: maximum and minimum luma (Y) values and maximum and minimum chroma (C) values. These values are derived from either two or four indices or sample points. Each index maps a chroma sample to a corresponding luma sample, enabling the model to estimate chroma values more effectively by leveraging known correlations between luminance and chrominance in natural video content.
Once the model parameters are established, the system then applies them to convert the chroma block into a compressed bitstream. This results in more accurate chroma prediction, leading to better compression performance and reduced redundancy in the encoded bitstream.
The patent, titled “Parameter derivation for intra prediction”, was filed on August 14, 2020, and was granted on March 2, 2021 to ByteDance Inc. The listed inventors are Kai Zhang, Li Zhang, Hongbin Liu, Jizheng Xu, and Yue Wang. Perkins Coie represented ByteDance in the filing.
VVC bitstream structure and formatting
U.S. Patent No. 11,503,330 on the other hand discloses a method of converting a video encoded in the VVC standard into a bitstream stored in a memory. A key component of the bitstream is the current partition, which refers to a specific region of a video frame that is processed independently for motion compensation and prediction.
To refine motion prediction, the bitstream includes two parameters. The first parameter selects a correction table containing motion vector (MV) adjustments, with smaller values assigned to smaller indices for better compression, while the second parameter indicates the direction in which the correction is applied to the base motion vector. The decoder then uses both to refine motion prediction for the block.
The MVs are calculated by an inter predictor, which examines how blocks move between frames. This motion data is encoded as prediction parameters and included in the bitstream, allowing the decoder to reconstruct frame content using motion cues instead of raw pixel data. Alternatively, the inter predictor may operate in a mode where motion information is not explicitly encoded, but instead derived by the decoder based on predefined rules, reducing the amount of data in the bitstream.
In contrast, the intra predictor generates predictions for a block within the current video frame by referencing nearby blocks in the same frame. It estimates the block’s content using pixel values such as brightness (luma) and color (chroma) from the surrounding areas stored in the memory.
Additionally, the bitstream includes prediction residual data (prediction error data), which captures the difference between the predicted and actual block content. This data is compressed using an entropy encoder, which converts quantized values into a compact format using arithmetic encoding. By assigning shorter codes, similar to that of the HEVC standard, this further reduces the bitstream size.
The patent, titled “Encoder, decoder, encoding method, and decoding method”, was filed on May 13, 2021 and was granted on November 15, 2022 to Panasonic. Karl Hermanns, Kevin Costanza, Shoko Leek, et al from Seed IP Law Group are the representatives of the assignee. Jing Ya Li, Chong Soon Lim, Ru Ling Liao, Hai Wei Sun, Han Boon Teo, Kiyofumi Abe, Tadamasa Toma, and Takahiro Nishi are listed as the inventors.
Future directions following the VDP Pool
Following the formation of Access Advance’s VDP Pool, attention may turn to how licensing frameworks can adapt to emerging technologies and evolving market demands. The continued development of video compression standards and potential inclusion of future codecs could shape the direction of licensing strategies. Access Advance’s press releases already point to continued interest from patent holders in joining its existing HEVC and VVC pools, suggesting a growing base of licensors. As the industry moves forward, discussions around patent licensing models and global collaboration could shape how future codecs are managed and implemented.
