I have run into the same problem myself.
I am also using glTexSubImage2D with a pixel unpack buffer, followed by glTexParameteri. The same error, GL_INVALID_OPERATION, is returned by glGetError.
Fortunately, glTexParameteri can easily be called before glTexSubImage2D in my program, so thanks for the suggested workaround.
On the other hand, I found nothing mentioned about such a restriction in the OpenGL documentation. And, as usual, I have seen no such error on NVidia GPUs so far.
Here are the details of my configuration:
Windows 7, 64bit
AMD Radeon HD 7800
Driver Version: 12.104.0.0 - Catalyst 13.4 (3-28-2013)
OpenGL 4.2