Why AOMedia Maintains a Royalty-Free AV1 Patent Pool

The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) maintains a royalty-free patent pool for the AV1 video codec to eliminate costly licensing barriers, prevent legal fragmentation, and accelerate universal adoption across hardware and the open web. By pooling essential patents from industry leaders and offering them free of charge under reciprocal defensive terms, AOMedia ensures that next-generation video compression remains accessible, predictable, and legally secure for developers, device manufacturers, and streaming platforms alike.

Overcoming the Flaws of Prior Licensing Models

The creation of AV1 and its royalty-free pool was largely a direct response to the fragmented and expensive licensing environment of High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/H.265). While older codecs like H.264 enjoyed predictable, centralized licensing through MPEG LA, HEVC fractured across multiple competing patent pools—including MPEG LA, HEVC Advance, and Velos Media—alongside independent patent holders.

This fragmentation led to:

• Unpredictable Costs: Streaming providers faced compounding fees from multiple licensing administrators.
• Complex Terms: Vague rules surrounding streaming distribution fees discouraged broad commercial rollout.
• Stifled Innovation: Free and open-source software projects could not legally include native HEVC support due to prohibitive per-unit royalty requirements.

AOMedia designed AV1 to bypass these bottlenecks entirely by establishing a unified, non-proprietary alternative.

Fostering Fast, Frictionless Adoption

Modern video distribution requires ubiquitous deployment across thousands of device types, browsers, operating systems, and media players. By eliminating per-unit hardware royalties and fees on distributed video streams, the AV1 patent pool removes financial friction.

Device manufacturers can embed AV1 decoders into silicon chips without tracking per-device royalty distributions. At the same time, software developers and browser vendors can ship native AV1 playback out of the box. This zero-cost entry point allows the codec to achieve mass-market scale much faster than traditional proprietary formats.

Legal Protection Through Defensive Cross-Licensing

A critical feature of AOMedia's royalty-free model is the reciprocal patent license, which includes a defensive termination clause. When a company uses AV1 or joins the alliance, it agrees to license its own patents essential to AV1 on a royalty-free basis to all other implementers.

If a participant or external entity files a patent infringement lawsuit against an AV1 user regarding AV1 implementation, the aggressor loses their own royalty-free license to the entire pool. This mutual assured destruction model provides robust legal defense, effectively shielding the ecosystem from aggressive patent assertion entities and commercial lawsuits.

Aligning with the Open Web

Foundational web standards—such as HTML, CSS, and WebRTC—thrive because they are built on open, unencumbered standards. Video accounts for the vast majority of consumer internet traffic, making video compression a fundamental utility rather than just a commercial product. AOMedia’s royalty-free patent framework treats video compression as core internet infrastructure, ensuring that high-efficiency 4K, 8K, and HDR streaming remains accessible to all without gatekeeping.