United States: Dolby Sues Snap Over AV1 Video Codec, Challenging ‘Royalty-Free’ Status

Dolby has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Snap Inc., the developer of Snapchat, alleging that the platform’s video encoding and decoding technologies infringe several Dolby patents and raising new questions about the “royalty-free” status of the AV1 video codec.

The lawsuit, filed on March 23, 2026, claims that Snapchat’s video conversion, encoding, and decoding processes unlawfully use Dolby-owned technologies. At the center of the dispute is whether the AV1 codec incorporates Dolby’s patented innovations despite being marketed as an open and royalty-free standard.

AV1, developed by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), has gained popularity as a royalty-free alternative to formats such as HEVC (H.265). AOMedia includes major technology companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Netflix, and promotes AV1 as a standard developed under a royalty-free patent policy.

Dolby, however, alleges that Snap infringed four of its patents related to video compression technologies, including prediction between color planes, block merging and skip mode support, low-latency sample sequence coding, and entropy coding mechanisms.

According to the complaint, AV1 reuses technical concepts previously established in HEVC, which Dolby argues may still be subject to third-party patent rights and licensing obligations. Dolby stated that while it licenses HEVC technology under appropriate terms, it did not contribute its patents to AV1 or agree to AOMedia’s royalty-free policies.

The lawsuit also notes that Access Advance, which manages a patent pool including Dolby patents, has urged Snap since August 2025 to obtain a license. Dolby claims Snap continued using the technology without authorization.

Dolby is seeking damages, a jury trial, and an injunction to prevent further use of the alleged infringing technology. The company also asked the court to confirm that it has no obligation to license AV1 under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms, or alternatively that it has already satisfied any such obligations through negotiations.

Legal experts say the case could have broader implications for the adoption of AV1, particularly if the court finds that additional patent licensing is required for technologies previously considered royalty-free.

Neither Dolby nor Snap responded to requests for comment. The Alliance for Open Media also indicated it had received inquiries but had not yet issued a response at the time of reporting.