Firm quietly boosts H.264 streaming license fees from $100,000 up to staggering $4.5 million — backbone codec of the internet gets meteoric increase, AVC hikes follow disastrous H.265 licensing increa

Via Licensing Alliance (Via LA), the patent pool administrator for H.264/AVC, has quietly replaced its flat $100,000 annual streaming license cap with a tiered fee structure reaching up to $4.5 million per year for the largest platforms. The change affects only unlicensed implementers seeking new licenses in 2026 or later; existing licensees retain their original terms. Tier 1 OTT services with 100M+ subscribers, major social media platforms, and large cloud gaming services face the top rate. This follows similar escalations in H.265/HEVC licensing that caused Asus and MSI laptop sales to be banned in Germany and prompted Dell and HP to disable H.265 decoding. Patent pools are also now pursuing royalties for VP9 and AV1, codecs previously considered royalty-free, raising concerns that combined licensing costs could push major streaming platforms into nine-figure annual codec fees.