Introduction
On March 23, 2026, Dolby sued Snap in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, and the complaint includes a jury demand. In addition, Access Advance announced that Dolby has asserted patent infringement claims relating to AV1 and HEVC in both the United States and Brazil. As a result, this matter is not merely a dispute between two companies. Rather, it has become an event that forces a fresh reexamination of the scope of the assumption that AV1 is “open and royalty-free,” an assumption that has supported its widespread adoption.
AV1 is a video codec released by AOMedia in 2018, and AOMedia officially explains that AV1 is provided under a royalty-free patent policy. In fact, the AOM Patent License 1.0 establishes a framework under which implementers are granted a free, royalty-free patent license to “Necessary Claims.” At the same time, however, that license is limited to the licensor’s own “Necessary Claims,” and it explicitly states that “the license is granted directly from the licensor to the licensee.” In other words, while AOMedia’s framework is powerful, it is not a mechanism that eliminates all third-party patents in the world.
The Essence of This Lawsuit
What is truly at issue in this lawsuit is not the abstract question of whether “AV1 is royalty-free,” but the far more concrete question of whose patents, covering what subject matter, are the subject of a royalty-free commitment by whom. As of 2019, AOMedia emphasized the existence of royalty-free patent commitments by its members, patent due diligence, and a patent defense program. Dolby, however, has stated on its official website that it has never accepted the AOM Patent License 1.0 and has no intention of being bound by it in the future, while also indicating that it makes its AV1-related patents available through pool licensing and bilateral negotiations.
Viewed in this light, the current dispute is not a story that “AOMedia’s promise was false.” Rather, it should be understood as a case in which litigation has made visible the fact that “the commitments made by AOMedia participants” and “the patents of right holders outside AOMedia, or those who contend that they are not bound,” are separate issues. “Royalty-free” is often taken to mean “free to use with peace of mind,” but legally it may mean no more than that “a particular right holder grants a royalty-free license for a certain scope of rights.” This lawsuit is forcing the market to confront that gap.
An Often Overlooked Point
One particularly interesting point is that Snap Inc. is listed by AOMedia as a Promoter Member. AOMedia itself explains that the listed companies contributed to the creation of AV1 and license their patents essential to the codec on a royalty-free basis. Even so, the fact that a company may still be sued by a third party highlights the severity of this lawsuit. Being a participant does not mean being immunized from third-party patents.
Moreover, what Dolby is targeting is not merely peripheral technology. According to reports, the asserted patents include four U.S. patents relating to cross-color-plane prediction, block merge and skip modes, sample array coding for low-latency processing, and entropy coding. Whether these technologies are in fact essential to AV1 implementations, or the extent to which Snap’s specific implementation satisfies the patent claims, will be worked out in the course of the litigation. At a minimum, however, the fact that the dispute reaches compression technologies close to the core of the codec is likely to have a significant psychological impact on the industry.
The Impact on AV1 Adoption
It would be premature to conclude from this lawsuit alone that “AV1 is finished.” AOMedia still has a strong base of participating companies and has continued to expand AV1 under a royalty-free policy. The AOM Patent License 1.0 and the patent defense program also remain in place. Accordingly, AV1’s technical advantages and adoption track record are not about to disappear overnight.
That said, the meaning of adoption may change. Until now, AV1 has been understood as a standard that makes it easier to avoid the complex licensing burdens associated with HEVC. Going forward, however, it may come to be understood instead as a standard in which “the rights situation within AOMedia is relatively well organized, but the risk of external patent assertions is not zero.” If so, video streaming services, social media platforms, and device manufacturers will need to revisit their criteria for technology selection, taking into account not only compression efficiency and implementation cost, but also the cost of responding to third-party patent claims.
Practical Implications
From the standpoint of intellectual property practice, the important point is that even with open standards or royalty-free standards, at least three layers must be considered separately when making adoption decisions. The first is the patent commitments exchanged within the standard-setting body or consortium. The second is the existence of third-party patents belonging to parties that have not joined those commitments, or that dispute being bound by them. The third is the question of what patent risks are triggered by one’s own implementation, not only at the level of the specification itself, but also at operational layers such as transcoding, adaptive delivery, device detection, and hardware acceleration. The Snap case shows precisely that an evaluation extending to this third layer is necessary.
Moreover, this type of risk is not unique to Dolby v. Snap. Reuters has reported that Nokia sued Warner Bros. and Paramount over video streaming technology, and that InterDigital sued Amazon over video compression patents. In the fields of video codecs and delivery optimization, battles over standard-essential patents and adjacent patents are ongoing. In that sense, it would be more unnatural to assume that AV1 alone will remain exceptionally untouched by such disputes.
Conclusion
What this lawsuit shows is the fact—something that should be self-evident in the world of intellectual property—that “royalty-free” and “free from patent risk” are not the same thing. AV1, however, has made that distinction harder to see precisely because of the strength of its underlying ideal. That is why Dolby v. Snap is so symbolic. This is not a case that signifies the failure of AV1. Rather, it is a case that reminds the market once again that when an open technology ecosystem enters a mature phase, what ultimately matters are the scope of contractual commitments, the ownership of patents, and the specifics of implementation.