Dolby sues Snap over video compression patent claims tied to AV1 and HEVC

Dolby Laboratories filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware alleging Snap infringed four video compression patents.

Snap uses HEVC and AV1; Dolby says AV1 implementations include proprietary inventions not licensed on royalty-free terms and that the same technologies appear in HEVC.

Dolby says AOMedia does not control all patents used in AV1 implementations and that the AV1 specification was completed after many foundational video coding patents had already been filed.

Dolby is seeking a jury trial, damages, a ruling that it has no obligation to license the asserted patents under FRAND, and an injunction blocking further infringement by Snap.

The Alliance for Open Media promotes AV1 as royalty-free and includes Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Netflix; Access Advance and The Sisvel Group have assembled AV1 patent pools.