On 29 April 2026, Hikvision transferred a number of its European and US patents to Hanno IP LLC, an entity under the patent monetisation firm Longhorn IP, marking its first foray into transferring patents to a non-practising entity (NPE) for the purpose of monetising its patent portfolio.

The assignee, Longhorn IP, is a patent management company headquartered in Texas, USA, engaged in the acquisition, development and licensing of high-value patent portfolios. Its subsidiaries have previously initiated patent infringement litigation against companies such as Samsung Electronics, Xiaomi and TCL. Hanno IP LLC, the entity acting as the assignee for this patent portfolio, is a subsidiary of Longhorn IP specifically established to hold and manage specific patent assets.

Founded in 2001, Hikvision is a technology company dedicated to technological innovation. It focuses on smart IoT, big data services and smart business solutions, providing smart IoT products and services that integrate software and hardware, as well as cloud and edge computing.

This transfer involves a total of 12 granted US patents and their corresponding European family patents, primarily covering Hikvision’s core surveillance camera and related technology fields, including patents in areas such as mobile imaging, video analytics, robotic computer vision, memory optimisation, and streaming media bandwidth management. Representative examples include:

Streaming bandwidth management: US Patent 10,542,064 and European family EP3322145B1 (“Method for calculating streaming network transmission bandwidth”);

Memory management: US Patent 11,604,726 and European family EP3640807B1, EP4040299B1 (“Memory management method and apparatus”);

In addition, the transferred patents cover panoramic image generation, object detection, autofocus, image stitching and more.

It is worth noting that Hikvision joined the anti-NPE organisation LOT Network (License-On-Transfer Network) in 2018. Under the organisation’s rules, member companies undertake that, should they transfer or sell their patents to an NPE, they will automatically grant a licence to all other members for that patent, thereby reducing the patent’s appeal to NPEs.

However, a statement on the LOT Network website indicates that Hikvision submitted notice of its withdrawal from the programme in June 2023. The LOT Network speculates that Hikvision’s decision to withdraw may stem from the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s 2022 ban on new authorisations for Hikvision products to enter the US market on national security grounds.

Furthermore, in April, Hikvision was listed as both a licensor and a licensee in the HEVC Advance patent pool under Access Advance. IP Finance will continue to monitor global patent licensing developments.