According to reports,Via Licensing Alliance (Via LA), the manager of the H.264/AVC patent pool, has completed the restructuring of streaming media licensing fees, raising the original annual fee limit of US$100,000 to a maximum of US$4.5 million.

This adjustment only applies to previously unlicensed parties that apply for authorization in 2026 and later. Enterprises holding valid AVC authorization before the end of 2025 will retain the original terms.

The new rates are divided into three levels based on platform type and size,Tier 1 covers OTT services with over 100 million subscribers, FAST services with over 100 million daily active users, social media platforms with over 1 billion monthly active users, and cloud gaming platforms with over 15 million monthly active users. The annual fee is the full amount of US$4.5 million.

Tier 2 and Tier 3 are US$3.375 million and US$2.25 million respectively, and only businesses identified as small or emerging platforms by Via LA can retain the US$100,000 cap.

H.264 is currently the most widely deployed video codec on the Internet, with almost all streaming platforms, hardware encoders, and browsers using it as a baseline or fallback solution.

Although a large number of its patents have expired, patent licensing lawyers pointed out that the court will still consider the strength and life of the remaining valid patents when evaluating FRAND (fair, reasonable, non-discriminatory) rates, rather than just the number.

The Via LA rate adjustment is part of an overall rise in codec licensing costs, with both the Avanci Video patent pool and Access Advance's video distribution patent pool pursuing HEVC, VVC, VP9 and AV1 content royalties from streaming services.

Rates for Access Advance are capped at approximately $63 million per year, with Avanci's published rates ranging from 1.6% to 2.0% of revenue or $0.12 to $0.15 per user per month.

There is precedent for the knock-on effect of codec patent costs;After Nokia recently won a patent ruling in Germany, Acer and Asus were forced to suspend PC and notebook sales in the country.Dell and HP have disabled H.265 decoding in some PCs to avoid royalties.

H.264's equipment and service coverage far exceeds H.265, and similar problems may recur in a wider range of industries once Via LA chooses to expand the scope of application of the new rates.