HomeTechnologyAV1’s open, royalty-free promise in question as Dolby sues Snapchat over codec

AV1’s open, royalty-free promise in question as Dolby sues Snapchat over codec

TechnologyMarch 30, 2026
1 min read
AV1’s open, royalty-free promise in question as Dolby sues Snapchat over codec
Big Tech declaring AV1 royalty-free “doesn't mean that it is."

AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) was invented by a group of technology companies to be an open, royalty-free alternative to other video codecs, like HEVC/H.265. But a lawsuit that Dolby Laboratories Inc. filed this week against Snap Inc. calls all that into question with claims of patent infringement.

Numerous lawsuits are currently open in the US regarding the use of HEVC. Relevant patent holders, such as Nokia and InterDigital, have sued numerous hardware vendors and streaming service providers in pursuit of licensing fees for the use of patented technologies deemed essential to HEVC.

It’s a touch rarer to see a lawsuit filed over the implementation of AV1. The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), whose members include Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Netflix, says it developed AV1 “under a royalty-free patent policy (Alliance for Open Media Patent License 1.0)” and that the standard is “supported by high-quality reference implementations under a simple, permissive license (BSD 3-Clause Clear License).”

Read full article

Comments

Source: Ars Technica

Share this article

Related Articles

The Govee smart lamp brightened up my room, and then my life
2026Apr 25

The Govee smart lamp brightened up my room, and then my life

I knew things were not quite right when I had to throw a towel over a broken Ikea lamp to block out its light. How did I get here? I cover fancy and capable tech for a living, and yet, it took me two

Article1 min read
Read More