The AOM patent license covers any implementation of the format. It additionally covers the reference implementation, because the encoder may use techniques that aren't part of the bitstream format, and it's important to grant rights to those too.
Indeed, the whole point of Daala and AV1 is to do a really good job on the IP front so as to make it much harder for patent trolls to hold everyone hostage [0].
Comments
The AOM patent license covers any implementation of the format. It additionally covers the reference implementation, because the encoder may use techniques that aren't part of the bitstream format, and it's important to grant rights to those too.
http://aomedia.org/license/patent/
Indeed, the whole point of Daala and AV1 is to do a really good job on the IP front so as to make it much harder for patent trolls to hold everyone hostage [0].
0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3Yc5Hn9bhQ