EU antitrust regulators are investigating the video licensing coverage of the Alliance for Open Media (AOM), whose members embody Alphabet unit Google, Amazon, Apple and Meta, the European Commission stated on Thursday.

The investigation is the newest to hit the tech trade, which will probably be topic to robust new guidelines in Europe subsequent 12 months that would power corporations to vary their core enterprise fashions and do extra to sort out unlawful content material on their platforms.

“The Commission confirms that it has a preliminary investigation ongoing into AOM’s licensing policy,” a spokesperson for the EU govt instructed Reuters.

“The fact that the Commission has a preliminary investigation does not prejudge the outcome of the investigation on the existence of an infringement,” the spokesperson stated, with out offering additional particulars.

AOM didn’t instantly reply to an emailed request for remark. Founded in 2015, the group goals to create a brand new commonplace software program for streaming higher-quality 4K video on browsers, gadgets, apps, and gaming, generally known as AV1.

While the AV1 software program is just not but adopted broadly, Netflix and YouTube have began utilizing it for some clients, and browsers comparable to Google Chrome and Firefox have began to assist the brand new format.

Apple and Google didn’t instantly reply to an emailed request for remark. Meta and Amazon declined to remark. Microsoft, Netflix, Broadcom, Cisco, and Tencent, who’re additionally AOM members, didn’t instantly reply to emailed requests for remark.

Intel, Huawei, Mozilla, Samsung, and Nvidia are additionally AOM members, in keeping with its web site.

In a questionnaire despatched to some corporations earlier this 12 months and seen by Reuters, the EU watchdog stated it was investigating alleged anti-competitive behaviour associated to the license phrases of AV1 by AOM and its members in Europe.

“The Commission has information that AOM and its members may be imposing licensing terms (mandatory royalty-free cross licensing) on innovators that were not a part of AOM at the time of the creation of the AV1 technical, but whose patents are deemed essential to (its) technical specifications,” the paper stated.

It stated this motion could also be limiting the innovators’ skill to compete with the AV1 technical specification, and in addition get rid of incentives for them to innovate.

The questionnaire additionally requested in regards to the influence of an AOM patent license clause through which licensees would have their patent licenses terminated instantly in the event that they launched patent lawsuits asserting that implementation infringes their claims.

Companies danger fines of as much as 10 % of their international turnover for breaching EU antitrust guidelines.

© Thomson Reuters 2022