OpenAI, Adobe, and Truepic, which are members of C2PA, have also become defendants together.
C2PA members
Plaintiff KEEEX SAS, a French NPE, has sued OpenAI and others for infringing the European patent EP2949070 entitled "Method for checking the integrity of a digital data block".
KeeeX was founded in 2014 by Laurent Henocque. KeeeX invents the standard for verifiable files and processes. Our patented process makes your files self-protected and self-verifying by sealing in evidence to prove its non-modification, origin, date, context (geolocation, keyword, reference, copyright, link to other files…). The company holds two international patents from French public research (CNRS/AMU).
As indicated by a patent license document, KEEEX has obtained a sublicense for two patents from SATT Sud-Est, the technology transfer entity of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Aix-Marseille University (AMU).
SATT Sud-Est is the technology transfer structure of Aix-Marseille University (AMU) and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) for the PACA and Corsica regions, hereinafter jointly referred to as the "INSTITUTIONS".
The INSTITUTIONS are co-owners of two patent families: the first stems from the French priority patent application filed on 01/22/2013 under No. FR 1350549 and entitled "Procédé de vérification d’au moins une métadonnée d’un bloc de données numériques" citing as inventor Mr. Laurent Henocque; the second is from the priority patent application filed on 05/12/2014 under No. FR 1454205 and entitled "Base de fichiers relationnelle et interface graphique de gestion d’une telle base" citing Mr. Laurent Henocque as inventor.
SATT Sud-Est holds an exclusive license on the two above-mentioned patent families and is authorized to sub-license them in order to ensure their commercialization.
Thus, among all the defendants, the one that truly has a competitive relationship with KEEEX is the US-based Truepic Inc.
As shown in the image introducing its business on Truepic's official website.
In a world where AI-generated content and digital fraud are on the rise, verifying what is real is a challenge faced by every organization.
Truepic exists to provide clarity in this uncertainty. By enabling trust in digital media, we help companies identify fraud, enhance their customer experiences, and optimize processes.
Truepic's investors include Adobe, Sony, among others.
Therefore, this is actually a battle for dominance in digital content verification technology in the AI era, and also a head-on confrontation between European and American technologies.
Obviously, as Europe lacks truly big-tech AI companies, the innovations and technologies in this digital content verification segment thus need to gain recognition, making a patent war seemingly inevitable.
