AV1’s open, royalty-free promise in question as Dolby sues Snapchat over codec

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arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/av1s-open-royal…

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Ugh

Fuck Dolby. I mean fuck Snap too, but with this case, in specific, fuck Dolby.

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46

You shut your dirty whore mouth! Dolby has done some amazing things for the world of music and cinema!

https://projectionniste.net/docs/A%20Chronology%20of%20Dolby%20Laboratories%201965%20-%201998.pdf

https://professional.dolby.com/siteassets/cinema/cie-innovation-tech/cie-innovation-tech-dolby.pdf

While I am a big cinema and tech guy, I don't exactly know what goes into the AV1 codec of the top of my head, nor have I read the article yet, but I can bet they're not 100%in the wrong.

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-24

Eh, early Dolby is where they made real progress.

Modern Dolby is more about licensing than actually doing anything for the industry. Not limited to the codec discussion.

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29

They are, in fact, purely patent trolling in this case.

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Tl;DR

Yet, Dolby’s lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the District of Delaware [PDF] alleges that AV1 leverages technologies that Dolby has patented and has not agreed to license for free and without receiving royalties. The filing reads:

[AOMedia] does not own all patents practiced by implementations of the AV1 codec. Rather, the AV1 specification was developed after many foundational video coding patents had already been filed, and AV1 incorporates technologies that are also present in HEVC. Those technologies are subject to existing third-party patent rights and associated licensing obligations.

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17

Just write the specs and tests, then let AI implement it, done! It's valid opensource 😇

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12

Can someone provide a TLDR?

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I have no expertise in this field and this is what I got just from reading the article without doing any further research.

It seems that a consortium of giant tech companies got together to make a royalty-free video codec called AV1. This included getting legal agreements from a bunch of relevant patent holders that they wouldn't pursue legal action against anyone implementing AV1.

However, due to the U.S. patent office's current policy of issuing patents left and right and letting applicants sort out whether or not their patents are actually unique in court later, lawyers representing Dolby and a couple of other companies that hold some separate video-related patents have smelled money in the water and are trying to sort out whether or not their patents are unique in court.

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