IP Europe seeks regulatory clampdown on Alliance for Open Media model

The push against AOM represents a critical friction point between the dominant Big Tech streaming stack and traditional patent-based revenue models. If regulators find that royalty-free mandates constitute anticompetitive collusion, it could destabilize the adoption of AV1 as the industry's default next-generation codec. For streaming providers, this signals potential future licensing risks or litigation from third-party patent holders who are not members of the AOM consortium. Watch for a formal response from the European Commission to MEP Schwab’s inquiry, which will indicate if the EU plans to reopen its previously closed preliminary probe into AOM's licensing terms.

The tension between royalty-free consortia and traditional patent pools has intensified as AV1 adoption reaches a critical mass. Per Streaming Media Global (January 2026), AV1 now powers approximately 75% of video playback on YouTube and 70% across Meta's platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. This rapid scaling has been bolstered by hardware support, with approximately 88% of large-screen devices certified between 2021 and 2025 including AV1 hardware decode support. This hardware saturation creates immense pressure for smaller technology developers to adopt the standard despite the royalty-free requirements.

While the European Commission closed a preliminary investigation into AOM in May 2023, it explicitly noted the closure was for "priority reasons" and not a finding of compliance. This left the door open for renewed scrutiny as the market evolved. Meanwhile, the U.S. DOJ and USPTO have increasingly scrutinized "patent hold-out" and the suppression of compensation for innovators. In October 2025, DAAG Dina Kallay noted that royalty-free requirements in consortia dominated by market-leading implementers could effectively operate as collusive schemes that push out truly open, FAIR-based standards.

The competitive landscape is further complicated by the emergence of AV2. Per the International Center for Law & Economics (January 2026), AOM's announcement of AV2 as a successor to AV1 has revitalized concerns that Big Tech is creating a self-perpetuating, closed ecosystem. Traditional licensing bodies like Via Licensing Alliance and Access Advance—which manage pools for competing codecs like VVC (H.266)—continue to advocate for the F/RAND model, arguing that it remains the only sustainable way to fund high-cost R&D in video compression. As AV2 nears deployment, the regulatory outcome of this IP dispute will likely determine the financial viability of independent European video research for the next decade.