The European Union has reportedly opened an an investigation into the Alliance for Open Media over the organisation’s licensing of its software.
A spokesperson told Reuters: “The Commission confirms that it has a preliminary investigation ongoing into AOM’s licensing policy.”
The report states that the EU is investigating alleged anti-competitive behaviour related to the license terms of AV1 by AOM and its members in Europe.
It adds that the EU is looking into a clause in the AOM patent license that states licensees would immediately lose their right to use the technology if they launched patent lawsuits asserting that implementation infringes their claims.
The AOM released AV1, its next-gen royalty free codec in 2018, and it has already been adopted by Netflix and YouTube.
The European Union currently implements fines of up to 10 per cent of a company’s global turnover if they are found to have breached its anti-trust rules.
