Dolby is why we can't have anything nice

BAN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW FOREVER IT SUCKS

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/av1s-open-royalty-free-promise-in-question-as-dolby-sues-snapchat-over-codec/

AV1’s open, royalty-free promise in question as Dolby sues Snapchat over codec

Big Tech declaring AV1 royalty-free “doesn't mean that it is."

Ars Technica
patents harm society (and commerce) by diverting wealth (and therefore power) from the people doing real ongoing work to the people who filed paperwork on someone else's tangentially related work years earlier, often without anyone being aware of any claimed tenuous connection at the time the work is done
this makes patents a random timebomb on any business endeavour, like earthquakes or wars
so either abolish them or provide universal patent insurance (== the government pays everybody's patent license bills out of taxes)

@brooke if we had single-payer healthcare, all patents would be treated for free.

wait, what?

@brooke isn’t there a clause somewhere that now prevents Dolby from using AV1 (on the basis of everyone else’s patent grants that forbid you from bringing such a lawsuit)? or am I misremembering stuff

@LucasWerkmeister yes and presumably Dolby is fine with that

https://aomedia.org/license/patent-license/

Alliance for Open Media Patent License 1.0

An Alliance of Global Media Innovators

Alliance for Open Media
@brooke damn them

@LucasWerkmeister tbf, "if you sue us we terminate all your rights" is kind of a dick move from anybody; sometimes people have legitimate rights they deserve to enforce

i mean in this case it's dolby being dicks but you know ;)

@brooke eh, to me it sounds like a reasonable deterrence hack in a legal landscape where seemingly anyone can pop up with a new patent claim at any time to jeopardize huge software projects

(of course the better solution would be to raze that legal landscape ^^)

@LucasWerkmeister mutually assured destruction is an effective deterrent only until one side realizes they won't be destroyed :)