Technology

The license is royalty free. AOMedia requires it's contributors to contribute royalty free, and AOMedia has worked hard to ensure it doesn't infringe anyone else's IP, but that doesn't stop other companies (some patent trolls) from asserting "You can't do xyz without infringing some obscure patent I own." These companies (like Dolby) target the companies that license AV1, and say "You've infringed my IP. Pay me $x per product that implements AV1, or I will sue you for much greater damages." So AV1 really is licensed royalty free, what we have here is a third party that isn't part of AOMedia (that really liked making money the old way) trying to extract revenue on dubious claims of patent essentiality.

The fun part is that nobody really knows (or cares) whether AV1 is really infringing any IP. They know that the threat of litigation is likely to induce enough people to just pay that the whole charade is worth it. And perhaps ironically, the companies like Dolby want to litigate even less than the companies they are threatening because litigation tends to be a winner take all thing. If they lose, then nobody pays them; not even the companies they bullied into paying. The video codec IP world has operated this way for decades. This is what AOMedia hoped to change. It's Governing Members are some heavy hitters. If they were to defend AV1, they could easily out-muscle players like Dolby. That might happen, but these sorts of things play out over a very long time horizon.