Hanno IP LLC, an entity affiliated with U.S.-based patent monetization company Longhorn IP, has acquired a patent portfolio from China’s Hikvision.
The portfolio comprises 12 granted U.S. patents and “multiple” granted European patents, according to a statement issued by Longhorn IP.
Hikvision’s operating business is focused on surveillance cameras and related technologies, and the portfolio it has assigned to Hanno IP is broadly reflective of that. The patents cover areas including mobile imaging, video analytics, and computer vision for robotics, as well as memory optimization and streaming media bandwidth management.
Among the assigned patents mentioned in Longhorn’s statement are:
- U.S. Patent No. 10,542,064 with European counterpart EP3322145B1 (“Method, server side and system for computing bandwidth of network transmission of streaming media”)
- U.S. Patent No. 11,604,726 (“Memory management method, electronic device and storage medium”) with counterparts EP3640807B1 and EP4040299B1 (“Memory management method and apparatus, and electronic device and storage medium”)
- U.S. Patent No. 10,949,673 (“Target detection method and device”)
- U.S. Patent No. 11,586,664 with EP3660700B1 (“Image retrieval method and apparatus, and electronic device”)
- U.S. Patent No. 10,991,072 (“Method and device for fusing panoramic video images”)
- U.S. Patent No. 11,012,620 with EP3664443B1 (“Panoramic image generation method and device”)
- U.S. Patent No. 11,330,172 with EP3534336B1 (“Panoramic image generating method and apparatus”)
- U.S. Patent No. 11,350,023 (“Automatic focusing method and device”)
- U.S. Patent No. 10,755,381 (“Method and device for image stitching”) with EP3373241B1 (“Method and device for image splicing”)
This appears to be the first time that Hikvision has assigned U.S. and European patents to a non-practicing entity (NPE), and suggests that the Chinese company is now actively looking to monetize parts of its extensive patent portfolio.
Notably, back in 2018 Hikvision joined the License-On-Transfer Network (LOT Network), an anti-NPE program in which member companies commit to grant all other members a license to any patents that they transfer or sell to an NPE. This conditional license is automatically triggered upon such a transfer, thereby encumbering the patents and, theoretically, making them less attractive to prospective NPE buyers in the first place.
A note on LOT Network’s website indicates that Hikvision submitted notice of its withdrawal from the program in June 2023.
At the time, LOT Network suggested that Hikvision’s decision to withdraw may have been driven by the 2022 U.S. Federal Competition Commission (FCC) ban on new authorizations for Hikvision products entering the U.S. market, on national security grounds (November 22, 2022 FCC report and order). In a post on its website, LOT Network drew a comparison with Huawei, which accelerated sales of patents to NPEs following its U.S. government ban in 2019 (2023 LOT Network post).
In another sign of its changing approach to portfolio management, Hikvision was recently listed as a licensor, as well as a licensee, in Access Advance’s HEVC Advance patent pool (April 23, 2026 ip fray article).