When V-Nova, inventor of the low complexity video enhancement coding (LCEVC) MPEG compression standard, issued an announcement celebrating the landmark of reaching 1000 patents, our initial thought was surely this is just a drop in the ocean? But it isn’t until we compare this millennium IP portfolio with those of other vendors specializing in video compression techniques that V-Nova’s R&D flex really comes into focus. Ateme lists just 72 patents. Harmonic has approximately 160 patents (although these are a mix of video and broadband patented technologies), according to a third-party patent website. This same site assigns some 100 patents to Synamedia, including several encoding and ABR techniques, while Brightcove has a similar number of patents assigned, of which we understand…