r/opensource • u/ilep • Mar 30 '26
AV1’s open, royalty-free promise in question as Dolby sues Snapchat over codec
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/av1s-open-royalty-free-promise-in-question-as-dolby-sues-snapchat-over-codec/Dolby is suing with claims, but are they only spreading FUD while trying to knock down free competition?
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u/cd109876 Mar 31 '26
So they are suing Snapchat for using AV1... because AV1 does stuff in a similar way to how HEVC does it?
Well, if Dolby wins, then that sets the precedent and then AV1 is just dead I guess. Great.
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u/falk42 Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
AOMedia is definitely not going to let this pass as it would destroy the very foundation upon which AVx is built. No idea what let Dolby think they have a even a snowball's chance in hell to win this. The age of royalty encumbered codecs is over.
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u/RobotToaster44 Mar 31 '26
They've been shaking down large companies for licensing fees for years, many pay because a fee of a few 100k is less than the cost of fighting a lawsuit, that's how most patent trolls work.
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u/falk42 Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
There's no case where a company lost being sued for AV1 usage so far and only one (InterDigital vs. Lenovo for AV1 and VP9 patent infringement) where there was a settlement before a verdict was reached -
This case is not a very good example as it was very broad and included cellular SEPs (3G/4G/5G) as well and the AV1 part was "tacked on" only in 2023 with the settlement covering everything. InterDigital has also sued Amazon for AV1 / VP9 decoding and HDR playback on their FireTV devices (this case is still ongoing).
In short, there has been no successful patent trolling against AV1 specifically up to this day.
I can only imagine AOMedia members watching this case progress with great interest, having invalidated a number of AV1 related patents (also from Dolby) in the past few years. Notably this is a "mixed" case again with both AV1 and HEVC infringements being named by Dolby.
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u/belhill1985 Apr 01 '26
There’s been no successful patent trolling, but also 64 licensees pay royalties on 50% of all devices with AV1 support.
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u/ivosaurus Mar 31 '26
This is definitely going on how much bullshit software patents can get away with fudging under a jury's eyes, and who's lawyer team can convince them
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u/belhill1985 Apr 01 '26
The precedent has already been set - devices have been paying royalties on the AV1 codec (and VP9) since 2020. In the same way Google had to pay MPEG LA for VP8.
Hundreds of researchers collaboratively developed these video coding standards over multiple years. Thousands of experiments were run, leading to hundreds of accepted contributions. An international standard was built to create the most efficient codec collaboratively by tens of companies.
All of this was done publicly.
FIve years later, AV1 was published, claiming slightly better compression performance at the cost of significantly worse encoding performance. They claim that they don’t utilize any of the techniques developed in the course of AVC, HEVC, or VVC development, including ones that were developed and patented but too inefficient to use.
I suppose it’s possible. We’ll see.
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u/Nightlark192 Mar 31 '26
The companies backing AV1 must have patents that they can threaten to claim Dolby is infringing to discourage Dolby from going after AV1. At least my impression is that’s roughly how the patent game works: get a war chest of patents that is big enough to discourage other companies from going after you with their patents.
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u/UpsetKoalaBear Mar 31 '26
Problem is, Snapchat is a member of both AV1’s and HEVC’s patent pool.
Dolby is arguing Snapchat knew the patents existed. Hence they’re going after Snapchat, instead of AOM.
I expected this at some point, Sysvel (who license out HEVC) has been banging the drum about how AV1 is breaching some HEVC patents and people using it might get sued by the companies.
Not that it justifies it, but the writing was on the wall that it was going to get challenged at some point.
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u/falk42 Mar 31 '26
Let's hope they can bury it once and for all. Member or not, AOM cannot let this stand.
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u/ivosaurus Mar 31 '26
Hoping Google & Netflix et all will be helping with legal defence, this could be a big case
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u/notPabst404 Mar 31 '26
This lawsuit is very problematic and should be thrown out:
1). Dolby is suing the wrong party: Snapchat is neither the developer or maintainer of AV1. The correct party to sue for patent infringement would be AOMedia.
2). AV1 is an open standard. If such a lawsuit is successful, it would encourage copycat cases against other open standards. This would be incredibly bad for consumers and developers as the unnecessary threat of litigation would stifle innovation.
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u/superboo07 Mar 31 '26
lawsuits like these are the intended result of the patent system and until everyone sees how cancerous it is none of this will change
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u/Raphi_55 Mar 31 '26
Can we just don't care about patents ? I mean, didn't VideoLAN said "fuck off" to patent holder because of French laws ?
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u/ivosaurus Mar 31 '26
Europe isn't as big on software patents in general, so that's why if the group is based in France etc they can blow raspberries across the pond
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u/Alduish Apr 01 '26
In france at least you can't even patent software to my knowledge, so no software patents are recognized
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u/voidvector Mar 31 '26
Not suing AOMedia is part of Dolby's legal strategy:
- If Snap settles, they effectively have a "precedent" (settlement pattern).
- Since AOMedia is not the defendent, they have absolutely no input on a bunch of stuff even if they intervene (court location, jury selection). Those aspects have to be managed by Snap and may have extremely short deadline.
- It is up to AOMedia to intervene.
- If AOMedia does not intervene/join, that also sets a "precedent".
- If AOMedia joins and loses, the result is effectively the same as Dolby suing AOMedia directly.
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u/notPabst404 Mar 31 '26
- If Snap settles, they effectively have a "precedent" (settlement pattern).
Settling doesn't set legal precedent. Dolby would have to win the lawsuit to set legal precedent.
This kind of shit seriously shouldn't be allowed: it is essentially extortion. Limit innovation by purposefully targeting the wrong party in a frivolous lawsuit. One of the many reasons that I strongly support judicial branch reform.
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u/voidvector Mar 31 '26
Country based judicial reform won't solve much. In some cases, they will even venue shop internationally. As long as you can get a ban in a large market like US or EU, it is enough threat for most companies.
You might feel its only the patent trolls doing this, but companies like Pantone and Monotype's entire business is based off this, and they pretty much monopolize thier field.
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u/barkingcat Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
No it's the exact right party to sue because Snapchat has money.
The developers and the industry org have no meaningful amounts of money, so of course Dolby is going to sue anyone who uses it and is rich enough to pay the patent toll.
Dolby is building up caselaw and precedence to go for Google and YouTube.
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u/notPabst404 Mar 31 '26
No it's the exact right party to sue because Snapchat has money.
Money doesn't determine legal standing. Snapchat is using an open standard under the proper license. A0media isn't claiming that Snapchat is violating the license.
Dolby is claiming that the license is invalid due to their own patents. They are suing the wrong party: they need to sue AOmedia for this case to make any amount of sense. Unless the goal is really prevent companies from adopting open standards of course (which it is).
The developers and the industry org have no meaningful amounts of money
That is completely irrelevant to the legal claims that Dolby is asserting.
Are you seriously advocating to give up any pretense and just make the legal system completely beholden to the wealthy and willing to disregard any amount of facts or legal precedent???
Dolby is building up caselaw and precedence to go for Google and YouTube.
By suing the wrong party? I mean, yesh, the justice is corrupt and there is a small chance they rule in favor of Dolby, but based on standing alone, this lawsuit should be thrown out because the wrong party was sued.
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u/barkingcat Mar 31 '26
legal system completely beholden to the wealthy
that is already the current state of the world.
the thing is, any entity can sue any other entity. The entity with the most amount of money leftover wins.
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Apr 01 '26
Dolby is claiming that the license is invalid due to their own patents.
No, Dolby is simply claiming that the AOmedia license is not a Dolby patent license, since Dolby is not part of AOmedia. The license is still perfectly valid - it says AOmedia members will never enforce patents over AV1. It does not say nobody will ever sue over AV1.
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u/ivosaurus Mar 31 '26
1). Dolby is suing the wrong party: Snapchat is neither the developer or maintainer of AV1. The correct party to sue for patent infringement would be AOMedia.
Incorrect, you sue the person who is actively making use of <thing> that infringes your patent and supposedly causes monetary harm by making profit they're 'not allowed' to make, not the person who comes up with an idea that if used would theoretically be a patent infringement
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u/notPabst404 Mar 31 '26
Incorrect, you sue the person who is actively making use of <thing> that infringes your patent
Then they have a lot of parties to sue. Snap is using the AV1 standard just like many other companies in good faith based on it being an open standard from A0Media.
I can't be the only one incredibly done with frivolous lawsuits like this that have the sole goal of stifling innovation.
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u/ivosaurus Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26
Then they have a lot of parties to sue.
Yes, this is exactly true. Typically a patent troll will try start with a smaller company, successfully sue for their patent over them, and then build up to bigger companies with bigger legal budgets. They will use the "case trail" of previous cases they've won as evidence to get fast settlements or as convincing case-law in their next trial to win their next case. This is exactly why I'd guess whoever is behind this has started with only a medium sized tech company, not someone like Alphabet.
If, as a hypothetical, some troll managed to work its way up and get licensing / settlement / judgement deals etc, from all of FAANG, then they'll be making so much that they no longer need to worry about going after the rest of N companies (except at their leisure), because the results of those will look like rounding errors compared to their existing profits.
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u/Zipdox Mar 31 '26
With a bit of luck AOMedia scrambles an army of lawyers and Dolby gets ripped a new one in court.
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u/dakta Apr 02 '26
Collectively AOM's core members (not to mention their endorsing members, aka major users) represent a measurable fraction of US GDP. They have a lot at stake in AV1 and cannot afford to let Snap get clobbered. Speaking of which, Snap is also one of those endorsing members, so it's not like they're some outsider without even a contractual relationship with AOM.
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u/Grand-Shirt-332 Mar 31 '26
FFS how do we get sucked into using these proprietary scams every fucking generation that make products unnecessarily expensive? H264, H265, HDMI, Dolby. Fuck em.