An expert team within Sisvel Tech has spent nearly a year conducting technical due diligence around the new codec, and this work will ramp up when the full specification is released. Interested parties should get in touch with us sooner rather than later

By Giovanni Ballocca and Enrique Valido

In September, the Alliance for Open Media (AOM) announced the planned year-end release of AV2, a follow-up to the AV1 video codec. So, we should expect that the full specification will become public at some point soon.

Like its predecessor, AV2 is being marketed as “developed under a royalty-free patent policy”. Like its predecessor, it is likely to incorporate technologies invented and patented by companies that are not bound by that policy.

Sisvel took the lead in correcting widespread misinformation about the ‘royalty-free’ nature of AV1. We formed a patent pool uniting 21 innovators whose technologies are used in the codec; we forged an agreement to observe FRAND principles and gold-standard transparency (although there was no contractual obligation to do so); and we ultimately licensed 50% of the AV1 finished product market, delivering large royalties to inventors.

We are fully prepared to do the same when AV2 is rolled out, leveraging the unparalleled expertise that we have gained in this sphere over the past nine years.

A specialised expert team within Sisvel Tech, our unique in-house R&D, technology and standards unit has begun conducting due diligence on AV2. These efforts will kick into high gear when the specification is released. We are already working with many of the leading innovators in the video space – any party that may be interested in a pool effort should get in touch with us as soon as possible.

What we know about AV2

Since the September announcement, developers involved in AOM have given technical presentations at industry events describing AV2’s architecture and the coding tools that it will implement.

In addition, the reference software for AV2, which is called AVM, has been available for a long time now. This is a working prototype or experimental testbed for AV2 in which engineers experiment with different ideas and tools. As completion of the AV2 project nears, this reference software is becoming more stable – meaning that the design is settling down and dramatic changes are not expected. Observing this gives us a good idea of what will end up in the final spec.

At this stage, we cannot positively identify patents that will read on AV2. However, it is becoming possible to determine which patents will almost certainly be excluded and which are still in the running for inclusion.

We will be able to dot the i's and cross the t’s when the final specification is released.

However, there is a strong likelihood that patented technologies developed by non-members of AOM will be used by AV2. There has been an uninterrupted 30-year march of innovation in the field of hybrid video coding and decoding and the standardisation thereof, leading to an inheritance of common knowledge and ideas that makes the development of 'patent free' codecs based on the same architecture virtually impossible. In this sense, any effort to develop a proprietary technology unindebted to these past efforts is almost bound to fail.

Sisvel Tech’s unique expertise

Codec technologies are at the heart of Sisvel’s 40-plus year track record in patent pool administration, and video compression is a Sisvel Tech core competency

Running programmes dedicated to AV1 and VP9 has given Sisvel and its video team unmatched expertise in dealing with AOM codecs.

These specialised skills set us apart. Many patent owners and licensing administrators have good internal knowledge of codec standards, such as those within the MPEG family. In many cases, patent owners are also active contributors to these standards and have a robust ability to identify essential patents.

But a proprietary standard such as AV2 presents two key challenges: experts must allocate significant time and resources to understand the specification; and identify which tools have been adopted.

The Sisvel Tech and licensing teams have immersed themselves in both MPEG and AOM codecs over the past nine years, developing a unique ability to ‘translate’ between them. This allows us to provide a level of support to patent owners – from patent mining to claim charting – that is rarely seen in other programmes. This expertise has been fundamental to the success of our AV1 pool.

Patent owners must act now

Thanks to our high-level understanding of the technology, we are already working with several patent owners to identify which parts of their portfolios may be relevant to AV2.

The release of the specification will kick off a robust process towards developing a pool. We will strive to determine which parts of the existing AV1 pool portfolio remain relevant to AV2; and we will begin evaluating the portfolios of potential new partners for relevant rights.

To avoid this becoming a long process, it’s important for patent owners who want to be involved to contact us now. This will enable us to be ready to act as soon as the time is right.

We look forward to getting to work. We hope you’ll join us.

Giovanni Ballocca and Enrique Valido are video coding experts with Sisvel Tech