The Open Media Alliance (AOMedia), overseeing the development of the AV1 video encoding format, has issued a statement regarding Sisvel's attempts to form a patent pool for collecting royalties on the use of AV1. AOMedia is confident that it will overcome the challenges that have arisen and maintain the free nature of AV1, which does not require royalties. AOMedia will protect the AV1-related ecosystem through a specially created program to guard against patent claims.
AV1 was initially developed as a royalty-free video encoding format based on the technologies, patents, and intellectual property of the AOMedia alliance members, who granted AV1 users a license for free use of their patents. Among AOMedia's members are companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla, Facebook, Amazon, Intel, IBM, AMD, ARM, Samsung, Adobe, Broadcom, Realtek, Vimeo, Cisco, NVIDIA, Netflix, and Hulu. The patent licensing model used by AOMedia resembles the approach of the W3C, which is utilized for creating royalty-free web technologies.
Before publishing the AV1 specification, an assessment of the patent situation concerning video codecs and a legal audit were conducted, involving world-class lawyers and codec experts. To ensure unrestricted distribution of AV1, a special patent agreement was developed that enables the royalty-free use of this codec and related patents. The AV1 licensing agreement includes a clause to revoke rights to use AV1 if patent claims are brought against other AV1 users, i.e., companies cannot utilize AV1 if they are involved in lawsuits against AV1 users.
Source: opennet.ru
