Are AV1 Hardware Encoders Free of Licensing Fees?

Commercial hardware vendors can legally design and sell proprietary AV1 encoders without paying licensing fees to the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia). AOMedia distributes the AV1 specification under a royalty-free patent license designed specifically to eliminate traditional codec royalties for both hardware and software implementations. However, while AOMedia itself imposes zero licensing fees and allows implementations to remain closed-source, vendors must still navigate potential patent claims from outside third parties.

The AOMedia Royalty-Free License

AV1 was created by AOMedia—a consortium including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia, and Amazon—explicitly to provide an alternative to royalty-heavy standards like HEVC/H.265. Implementers are covered under the AOMedia Patent License 1.0.

Under this license:

• No Royalty Fees: AOMedia members grant a royalty-free, worldwide, non-exclusive license to their essential patent claims reading on the AV1 specification.
• Hardware Coverage: The grant covers both encoders and decoders implemented in silicon, such as Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), SoCs, and GPUs.
• No Open-Source Mandate for Hardware: Implementing the AV1 specification does not require a vendor to open-source their Register-Transfer Level (RTL), microcode, or driver implementations. Hardware manufacturers can keep their silicon designs fully proprietary.

The Defensive Termination Clause

To benefit from AOMedia’s royalty-free terms, vendors must adhere to the license's defensive termination conditions. If an implementer files a patent infringement lawsuit against any AOMedia member or other licensee alleging that an AV1 implementation infringes their patents, the implementer’s own royalty-free license to AV1 essential patents is immediately revoked. This cross-licensing structure prevents companies from benefiting from the free standard while weaponizing their own patent portfolios against the ecosystem.

Third-Party Patent Pool Risks

While AOMedia does not charge fees, the broader patent landscape presents an external challenge. Patent assertion entities and pool administrators, most notably Sisvel, have formed third-party patent pools claiming to hold essential patents reading on AV1.

• The Third-Party Position: Sisvel and other non-AOMedia entities argue that AV1 utilizes foundational video compression techniques that infringe on their intellectual property, and they demand licensing royalties from hardware vendors selling AV1-capable devices.
• The AOMedia Defense: AOMedia maintains that AV1 was developed using clean-room techniques and unencumbered prior art. To protect the ecosystem, AOMedia established the AOMedia Defense Fund to assist members and specific licensees against third-party patent infringement claims.

Summary

Commercial hardware vendors do not need to pay licensing fees to AOMedia or open-source their proprietary architectures to implement AV1 encoders. The standard is architected to be completely royalty-free from the creator's standpoint. The only licensing risk vendors face comes from external, third-party patent pools asserting separate claims outside the AOMedia agreement.