Amazon Web Services told customers on February 2 it will no longer indemnify them against patent infringement claims related to audio and video codecs used in its media services.
The updated Service Terms affect AWS Elemental MediaLive, MediaConvert, Interactive Video Service, Chime SDK, GameLift Streams, and Kinesis Video Services. AWS says some codec patent holders are "increasingly refusing to license service providers" or demanding payments that "far exceed the value of their patented technology."
The fine print matters here. AWS continues offering uncapped IP protection for other services, but for these six products, you're on your own if patent holders come knocking. The company claims this approach is "commonplace across cloud media service providers," though it doesn't name names.
What AWS doesn't specify: which codecs carry risk. MediaLive alone supports H.264, H.265/HEVC, AV1, MPEG-2, AAC, and several Dolby formats. Without clarity on which patents are in dispute, customers can't assess their exposure.
History suggests the risk is real. Amazon recently settled multi-year licensing disputes with both Adeia and Nokia over video compression patents. InterDigital has successfully obtained injunctions blocking Disney content in Germany and Brazil over similar claims. Patent pools like Avanci and Access Advance claim royalties on H.265, H.266, VP9, and AV1 from streaming services.
The Motion Picture Association argues patent holders are "double-dipping" by charging both device makers and streaming services for the same technology. No U.S. court has definitively ruled whether encoded streaming triggers royalty obligations, creating uncertainty.
For CTOs and enterprise architects: codec selection is no longer just an engineering decision. It's now a legal risk management exercise requiring involvement from legal and finance teams. Organizations need to map codec usage across products, understand which patents apply to their deployment, and review whether their cloud provider's terms actually cover what they assumed.
The update is effective immediately. AWS says it attempted licensing negotiations but found the economics "not feasible" without passing costs to all customers. Translation: they'll keep using the codecs, but liability shifts to you.