July 8 news, as the EU strengthens supervision of large technology companies from 2023, various large technology companies have been investigated more or less.
The EU antitrust watchdog wants to investigate Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Tencent, Netflix, Hulu and several other big tech companies because of the Alliance for Open Media (AOM) video licensing policy, according to a new report.
AOM was established on September 1, 2015, with the goal of developing a free, patent-free video coding format to replace H.264 and HEVC, which require patent licensing.
According to public information, the AOM is a non-profit organization that develops open video coding. Its goal is to develop a patent-free video coding format. As a successor to VP9 video coding, it replaces the patented HEVC video coding. Its founding members include Amazon and Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, the alliance’s goal is to develop a new video encoding format under the terms of the BSD 2 license, drawing elements from Daala, Thor and VP10.
According to Reuters, EU regulators are unhappy with the alliance because the bloc wants to know if the companies are violating video licensing policies, and if and how this affects companies that do not join the alliance. “Committee sources say that AOM and its members may enforce licensing terms (mandatory royalty-free cross-licensing) against innovators who were not AOM when the AV1 technology was created, but whose patents are considered key to (its) technical specifications, ” the document states.
“The European Commission has confirmed that it is conducting a preliminary investigation into AOM’s licensing policy,” a spokesman for the European Commission told Reuters. “The fact that the European Commission has conducted a preliminary investigation does not indicate whether there is a violation of the findings,” the spokesman said, without giving further details.
So far, Apple, Google, Netflix, Broadcom, Cisco and Tencent did not respond to Reuters when the report was published, while Meta and Amazon declined to comment.
