The takeaway: For years, the industry has touted AV1 as the codec capable of sidestepping the royalty and litigation thicket surrounding HEVC. Now, a new lawsuit from Dolby Laboratories against Snap suggests that assumption may have been overly optimistic. The case highlights how emerging codecs remain vulnerable to patent disputes.
In a complaint filed in the US District Court for the District of Delaware, Dolby accuses Snap of infringing four video compression patents through Snapchat's use of both HEVC and AV1. The filing argues that AV1 implementations incorporate proprietary inventions that Dolby never licensed on royalty-free terms and that the same technologies already appear in HEVC.
A key point in Dolby's complaint is that AOMedia does not control all the patents used in AV1 implementations and that the codec's specification was completed after many foundational video coding patents had already been filed. Dolby is seeking a jury trial, damages, a ruling that it has no obligation to license the asserted patents under FRAND terms, and an injunction blocking Snap from further infringement.
The lawsuit challenges AV1's "royalty-free" image by highlighting the complex reality of codec patents. The Alliance for Open Media, whose members include Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Netflix, promotes AV1 as developed under a royalty-free policy and backed by high-quality reference implementations with a permissive license. Dolby, however, alleges that AV1 reuses concepts from HEVC, noting that both codecs follow nearly identical block-based coding methods. Its suit cites four patents.
Dolby says Snap relies heavily on HEVC and has licensed its patents through a pool. However, the app also handles AV1 videos, decoding and re-encoding them for delivery across various devices. The complaint notes that Snap's software checks whether a device supports AV1 decoding to stream the format when appropriate. According to Dolby, its patented techniques are critical to Snapchat's business, giving the company an unfair competitive advantage by using the technology without paying royalties.
The dispute reflects a broader debate over whether developers can treat AV1 as truly royalty-free. Two patent pool administrators, Access Advance and The Sisvel Group, have already assembled AV1 pools despite AOMedia's objections.
"The legal framework around video codecs is well established, and incorporating patented technology carries clear licensing obligations," Access Advance CEO Peter Moller said when Dolby announced its litigation. "Labeling a codec 'royalty-free' does not eliminate underlying patent rights."
Besides Dolby, InterDigital has a pending suit over AV1, alleging that some Amazon Fire streaming devices infringe its patents by supporting the codec. European Union antitrust authorities reviewed AOMedia's licensing policy in 2022 but closed their investigation in 2023 without issuing a compliance finding.
For streaming platforms, device makers, and large-scale video services, the stakes go beyond a single US case.
"Only because Big Tech says a codec should be royalty-free doesn't mean that it is," intellectual property activist and commentator Florian Mueller told Ars Technica. "Given that all codecs use somewhat similar techniques, the risk of infringing patents held by parties who did not offer royalty-free licenses is substantial."
Mueller said many streaming services operated for years without securing codec licenses because patent holders initially focused on hardware and software, a strategy that is now changing as streaming grows. He argued that companies such as Amazon and Disney are trying to convince courts they should not have to start paying video codec royalties now, after years in which no one, or at least no major player, pursued them for those fees.
Mueller also highlighted a structural difference with HEVC, which was developed with most essential patent holders signing a FRAND licensing pledge. With AV1, he warned, far more patent holders could hold essential patents without any FRAND obligations.
"In that case, they could theoretically ask for anything, even extortionate amounts, up to the point where someone would then stop implementing AV1," he said. "And the really bad thing here, which I'm sure is not Dolby's objective but it could be someone else's, is that someone could purposely make prohibitive royalty demands for AV1 in order to discourage use of the standard."
The outcome of Dolby's and InterDigital's cases could shape whether AV1 remains a practical choice for large-scale deployments. It has been eight years since AV1's release, and adoption still lags behind HEVC. A ruling that Dolby has no obligation to license on FRAND or royalty-free terms would force implementers to revisit assumptions about open video, or potentially rethink codec roadmaps altogether.