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 mentioned on Thursday.
The investigation is the newest to hit the tech trade, which shall be topic to robust new guidelines in Europe subsequent 12 months that might power firms 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 government advised 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 mentioned, 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, units, apps, and gaming, often called AV1.
While the AV1 software program just isn’t but adopted extensively, Netflix and YouTube have began utilizing it for some prospects, and browsers reminiscent of Google Chrome and Firefox have began to help 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 response to its web site.
In a questionnaire despatched to some firms earlier this 12 months and seen by Reuters, the EU watchdog mentioned 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 mentioned.
It mentioned this motion could also be proscribing the innovators’ potential to compete with the AV1 technical specification, and likewise get rid of incentives for them to innovate.
The questionnaire additionally requested in regards to the impression of an AOM patent license clause by which licensees would have their patent licenses terminated instantly in the event that they launched patent lawsuits asserting that implementation infringes their claims.
Companies threat fines of as much as 10 % of their world turnover for breaching EU antitrust guidelines.
© Thomson Reuters 2022
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