alt Hacker NewsThey are supposed to be, but Disney doesn't think so: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/av1s-open-royalty-fr...
Also, let's not forget that the majority of devices still don't have AV1 hardware decoding support. For example, Apple only recently (2023) added support with iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs.
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The claims made by Dolby that some H.265 patent claims that are formulated very vaguely also apply to AV1 are probably bogus.
Like many other such frivolous patent lawsuits, Dolby hopes to either scare the other company into making a deal in order to avoid bigger legal expenses, or to establish a legal precedent if their cunning lawyers can convince a technically incompetent jury that the H.265 patents are applicable to AV1.
This is the kind of trial that should have never been decided by a normal jury, but only by a panel of neutral experts in this field.
> For example, Apple only recently (2023) added support [for AV1].
Apple has been actively obstructing open video formats for a long long time—Apple is the reason there isn’t a baseline format for <video> in the HTML5 spec, for instance. (Or at least there wasn’t when the spec was still a well-defined document with a version number; I see no merit in keeping track of the “living” one.) Incidentally, Apple is a member of MPEG-LA and claims to hold numerous patents covering both AVC and HEVC.
At this point, whatever harms befall Apple’s users due to lack of Apple’s lack of format support are entirely Apple’s fault.