> It's hard to see HEVC as anything else than a legal liability.
I actually think the truth is the exact reverse. HEVC has easy-to-license patent pools. A couple of clicks and done.
The patent situation surrounding AV1 is complex. It claims to be a free format but multiple entities claim patents that cover it. A submarine patent lawsuit seems likely.
>The patent situation surrounding AV1 is complex. It claims to be a free format but multiple entities claim patents that cover it. A submarine patent lawsuit seems likely.
This can be said about anything. Sounds like FUD. There hasn't been a successful lawsuit yet, right ?
The Alliance for Open Source Media (the group behind AV1) is the subject of an ongoing investigation by the European Commission[1] who, per the article, appear to be threatening those who distribute software decoding with a fine of 10% of global revenue.
According to this article[2], Sisvel, the patent group claims its licensing for AV1 is
> more convenient than licensing from individual patent holders, which in this case include companies like Philips, GE, NTT, Ericsson, Dolby and Toshiba
So, yes there is FUD around AV1, but as FUD goes, it’s pretty legit considering the players and their “nationality ”.
Going to add that I don’t have any knowledge of the legitimacy of the patents involved, and think the legitimacy of software patents generally is often questionable.
Previous codes have been designed and sold as patented codecs. AV1 is meant to be royalty free by design. The claimants of the alleged patents can ask for money, but eventually somebody will refuse due to the very explicit royalty-free promise in AV1, and there should be a lawsuit. We have not seen that yet. As a practical matter, even if people are paying money silently, it would get on the grapevine. We haven't even seen any evidence of that either.
A submarine patent approach implies waiting for it to become popular enough that you can extort companies into paying, rather than just dropping the codec in lieu of something else.
Submarine patent lawsuits have the same probability for both of them. But guaranteed patent leeching applies only to HEVC. So HEVC has only downsides, no upsides in comparison.
> Submarine patent lawsuits have the same probability for both of them.
Frankly, I don't believe this, if only because HEVC has been around for much longer, and if this was going to happen, it already would have.
The patent pool situation is a little messy, as there are two possible pools, but given how ubiquitous the codec is now, most companies seem to be figuring it out.
You can't prove the opposite anyway. Whole "submarine patent" thing is just a speculative fear. You can't quantify it. So it applies to both in case someone has paranoia. But as above, in case of HEVC it's complemented with guaranteed protection racket fees for the likes of MPEG-LA. So HEVC is worse in the end.
If you've paid for HEVC you can say 'hey, I tried to do the right thing'. If you don't pay for AV1 it looks like you were trying to avoid doing the right thing.
That sounds like "if you paid your racketeer, you can expect you'll be OK". However tomorrow you can get an additional racketeer to the first and both will demand payment then. First won't care to protect you from the second. Unlike mob protection racket they aren't exclusive.
The right thing here is use something that doesn't have a default protection racket attached.
I actually think the truth is the exact reverse. HEVC has easy-to-license patent pools. A couple of clicks and done.
The patent situation surrounding AV1 is complex. It claims to be a free format but multiple entities claim patents that cover it. A submarine patent lawsuit seems likely.