All in all, having AV1 support heavily benefits the open source community, as AV1 itself is an open source codec. This means that AV1 has a royalty-free licensing model that makes it suitable for adoption in various open source projects. It was also designed to solve long-standing patent litigation issues that were common in other codecs in the industry.
It was certainly designed that way. However, Sisvel believes that AV1 uses patented technology in the specification. Sisvel announced this one year after the AV1 standard was finalized, and not during the three years the standard was being developed. Of course, patent holders can’t be expected to deeply investigate every new technology that’s coming out on the market…but this was the largest new technology, formed by a coalition of some of the biggest companies in the world deliberately designed to get away from patent-licensing organisations like MPEG LA, under development for 3 years. Read into Sisvel (and its member companies) motivations as you will.
Nonetheless, Unified Patents is hard at work challenging invalid AV1 patents, among others:
Unified is a 350+ international membership organization that seeks to improve patent quality and deter unsubstantiated or invalid patent assertions in defined technology sectors (Zones) through its activities.
Should Unified determine that its goals can be better served by settling a post-grant challenge (or agreeing to never file any challenges), Unified will consider settling in exchange for a license, though never for money. As with all aspects of its challenges, Unified acts independently when settling, and never provides members with advance notice of negotiations, draft settlement agreements, or actual settlement.
Unified is pleased to announce prior art has been found on three patents owned by Speir Technologies, an Atlantic IP Services subsidiary.
We would also like to thank the dozens of other high-quality submissions that were made on this patent. The ongoing contests are open to anyone, and include tens of thousands of dollars in rewards available for helping the industry to challenge NPE patents of questionable validity by finding and submitting prior art in the contests. Visit PATROLL today to learn more about how to participate.
In other news, more than half of the H.264 patents have expired, and all the essential ones will be expired by 2027.
It was certainly designed that way. However, Sisvel believes that AV1 uses patented technology in the specification. Sisvel announced this one year after the AV1 standard was finalized, and not during the three years the standard was being developed. Of course, patent holders can’t be expected to deeply investigate every new technology that’s coming out on the market…but this was the largest new technology, formed by a coalition of some of the biggest companies in the world deliberately designed to get away from patent-licensing organisations like MPEG LA, under development for 3 years. Read into Sisvel (and its member companies) motivations as you will.
Nonetheless, Unified Patents is hard at work challenging invalid AV1 patents, among others:
Don’t know who Unified Patents is?
They also do…prior art competitions?
In other news, more than half of the H.264 patents have expired, and all the essential ones will be expired by 2027.