GoKawiilH.264 Streaming Fees: What Changed, Who's Affected, and What It Means
H.264 (AVC) streaming royalties have been a solved problem for a long time. In August 2010, MPEG LA, the predecessor organization to the Via Licensing Alliance (Via), announced that internet video delivered free to end users would carry no royalties for the life of the license, a move widely read as a response to Google's open-sourcing of VP8. Subscription and pay-per-view content remained royalty-bearing, but the annual cap for large SVOD services was $100,000, a number so modest that most platforms treated it as a rounding error in the licensing budget. That picture changed at the start of 2026.
Via's new AVC Streaming License Fee structure, which applies to new licenses beginning in 2026, replaces the old single-cap model with a tiered system that scales sharply with platform size. For Tier 1 OTT platforms, or those with 100 million or more subscribers, the annual list fee is now $4,500,000. The same figure applies to Tier 1 FAST services (100M+ daily users), Tier 1 social media platforms (1B+ monthly active users), and Tier 1 cloud gaming platforms (15M+ monthly active users). Tier 2 and Tier 3 fees run $3,375,000 and $2,250,000, respectively. Only the smallest category, platforms Via defines as small or nascent, retains the $100,000 fee.
Table 1. Via's new rate structure for H.264.
The jump from the floor to the Tier 1 ceiling is 45x. For large platforms that previously viewed H.264 licensing as a negligible line item, which is a material change, provided, of course, it actually applies to them.
This change triggers several obvious questions. Who is actually affected? Why wasn't there a public announcement? How does the new fee structure work administratively? And what about the widespread belief that H.264 patents have largely expired? To address these questions, we sent two sets of questions to Via and a separate set to patent licensing attorney Jim Harlan, JD/MBA. Their responses are woven throughout the article, and Jim's complete Q&A appears as an appendix.
Who Is Actually Affected
The first and most important question is scope. Via's response to my questions was clear on this point: all AVC licensees with an active license as of the end of 2025 were entitled to retain the streaming terms of their original agreement. The new fee structure applies only to previously unlicensed implementers seeking a license starting in 2026.
That narrows the universe considerably. I asked Via about their outreach regarding this transition, and they replied that it had contacted unlicensed media companies in 2025 to inform them of the change and give them a window to secure a license under the old terms.
... continue reading