Dolby Laboratories has initiated legal action against Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, alleging that the social media platform infringes on four Dolby patents through its use of the AV1 video codec. This lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, directly challenges the foundational premise of AV1 as an open and royalty-free alternative to proprietary codecs like HEVC/H.265.
The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), a consortium including Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Netflix, developed AV1 under a royalty-free patent policy known as the Alliance for Open Media Patent License 1.0. AOMedia states that the standard is supported by high-quality reference implementations under a simple, permissive BSD 3-Clause Clear License. However, Dolby’s complaint contends that AV1 incorporates technologies covered by Dolby’s patents, which Dolby has not agreed to license without royalties.
In its filing, Dolby argues that AOMedia does not own all patents practiced by implementations of the AV1 codec. The specification was developed after many foundational video coding patents had already been filed, and AV1 integrates technologies that are also present in HEVC. These technologies, according to Dolby, are subject to existing third-party patent rights and associated licensing obligations.
Dolby is seeking a jury trial and a declaration that it is not obligated to license the patents in question under FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) licensing obligations. Additionally, Dolby requests the court to enjoin Snap from further alleged infringement. The company claims that the infringed patents are critical to Snapchat’s business operations.
The specific patents Dolby cites include U.S. Patent No. 10,855,99 for “Inter-plane prediction”; U.S. Patent No. 9,924,193 for “Picture coding supporting block merging and skip mode”; U.S. Patent No. 9,596,469 for “Sample array coding for low-delay”; and U.S. Patent No. 10,404,272 for “Entropy encoding and decoding scheme.”
This legal action is notable because lawsuits over AV1 implementation are relatively uncommon compared to those involving HEVC. In the U.S., numerous cases are open regarding HEVC use, with patent holders like Nokia and InterDigital pursuing licensing fees from hardware vendors and streaming service providers for technologies deemed essential to the standard.
The outcome of Dolby’s suit could have significant implications for the adoption and perception of AV1. If Dolby prevails, it may undermine the codec’s royalty-free promise, potentially leading to increased licensing costs and legal uncertainties for companies implementing AV1. This case highlights the ongoing challenges in balancing open standards with intellectual property rights in the video codec landscape.
