HEIC/HEIF Licensing and Patents, Explained

You want your web service to accept .heic photos from iPhones. Or convert them server-side. Or bundle support into a desktop application. You will quickly hear that "HEIC licensing is a pain." But that pain is actually three different problems tangled together. This article separates them, and states clearly which parts we could verify and which we could not.

HEIF and HEVC are different things: container versus codec

Start with the terms. HEIF (High Efficiency Image File Format) is a container format defined in ISO/IEC 23008-12. It specifies how images, image collections, thumbnails, metadata and editing operations such as rotation and cropping are stored, but it says nothing about how the image data itself is compressed.

HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding / H.265 / ISO/IEC 23008-2) is a compression format, that is, a codec. It was designed for video, but its intra coding (compression that is self-contained within one frame) can be used for still images.

What Apple emits with the .heic extension is HEVC-compressed image data inside a HEIF container. So "HEIC = HEIF + HEVC". Put AV1-compressed data into the same family of container instead, and you get AVIF.

Evidence that this separation is treated as a deliberate design boundary appears in the license for Nokia's HEIF reference implementation, which explicitly carves codec patents out of its grant:

“Codec Patent means a patent on image or video compression or decompression. Including, for the avoidance of doubt, any standard essential patent on any coding standard, such as ITU-T Rec. H.264, ISO/IEC 14496-10, ITU-T Rec. H.265, ISO/IEC 23008-2, ITU-T Rec. H.266, and ISO/IEC 23090-3.”

“For the avoidance of doubt the Licensed Patents shall not include Codec Patents. Codec Patent licenses are neither granted, implied nor otherwise conveyed hereunder.”

What this document shows is that the container layer and the codec layer are cleanly separated as units of rights clearance. It does not, however, show that the container is free to use commercially. The same document restricts the scope of the grant itself:

“Licensed Field means the non-commercial purposes of evaluation, testing and academic research…”

“…grants to you a non-exclusive, worldwide, non-sublicensable, no-charge, royalty-free … license, under its copyrights and Licensed Patents only to, use, run, modify …, and copy the Software within the Licensed Field.”

The grant is therefore limited to non-commercial evaluation, testing and academic research, and commercial use is not covered at all. The document further states that “Licensed Patents are limited solely to patents implemented in the Software.” This text cannot be used to conclude that the HEIF container is a low barrier. All it establishes is that container and codec are two layers to be cleared separately.

Source: nokiatech/heif LICENSE.TXT

Software licenses per implementation: libheif, libde265, x265

Now the software (copyright) layer. The open source stack for HEIC is not one monolith: the layer that parses the container and the layer that runs the codec are separate, and their licenses differ. Get this wrong and you can pull GPL code into a product without meaning to.

The item most often missed is x265 being GPL v2. The libheif README itself tells you to install x265 if you want HEIF encoding, and immediately warns that x265 is GPL. Reading alone can be done entirely with the LGPL-licensed libde265, but the moment you add writing, the character of your licensing obligations changes. If you statically link GPL v2 code into a product and distribute it, the GPL conditions can extend to the whole product, which usually rules this configuration out for proprietary software.

The end of the x265 license file points to a commercial licensing contact separate from the GPL. That is one option if you need HEVC encoding in a proprietary product — though, as covered below, obtaining a commercial software license does not automatically resolve the patent question.

Sources: strukturag/libheif (README, COPYING) / strukturag/libde265 (COPYING) / videolan/x265 (COPYING)

Software licensing and patent licensing are separate problems

This is the point this article most wants to make. Complying with an open source license and obtaining the right to practise a patent are two entirely different procedures.

The LGPL and the GPL are copyright licenses. They set the conditions under which source code may be copied, modified and redistributed. They cannot, on behalf of a third-party rights holder, grant you a license to patents that third party holds over the technology the code implements. The libheif developers do not hold the HEVC standard essential patents, so they are not in a position to grant anything of the sort.

Nokia's license text above demonstrates the point directly: it grants software rights — and then only for non-commercial purposes — while denying codec patent rights three ways over: neither granted, nor implied, nor otherwise conveyed. Obtaining the open source code does not conclude the patent discussion, and this is a shared assumption across the industry.

In practice, then, two things must be checked separately:

• Copyright side — can you satisfy the license terms (LGPL/GPL/MIT and so on) of the libraries you use, given your distribution format?
• Patent side — does your product or service practise the HEVC standard essential patents, and if so, is a license required?

The state of the HEVC patent pools (as researched)

HEVC patent licensing is generally offered through patent pools, which license the patents of multiple holders together. Note that not every patent holder joins a pool, so the possibility of having to negotiate individually with non-participating holders remains. HEVC historically suffered from a fragmented pool landscape, which has repeatedly been cited as an obstacle to its adoption.

The pool landscape has restructured in three stages

This section is precisely where "beware of stale sources" applies. The HEVC pools have moved twice in recent years, so the correct answer depends on the date.

Stage 1: Velos Media exits (through roughly 2023). There used to be a third pool, Velos Media. Major patent holders including BlackBerry, Ericsson, Panasonic, Sharp, Sony and Qualcomm left, and Velos Media is reported to have returned third-party patents to their owners and wound down its HEVC pool.

Stage 2: MPEG LA merges into Via Licensing (May 2, 2023). Via Licensing Corporation and MPEG LA combined to form Via Licensing Alliance (Via LA) — reported as the first merger of two patent pool administrators. What older material calls "the MPEG LA HEVC pool" passed to Via LA. If a source says "MPEG LA", start by reading it as Via LA. At this point two pools were operating: Via LA and Access Advance.

Stage 3: Access Advance acquires the programme (December 15, 2025). On December 15, 2025, Access Advance acquired Via LA's HEVC/VVC programme. It is now operated as the VCL Advance programme by Video Codec Licensing LLC, a subsidiary of Access Advance. The via-la.com HEVC/VVC page itself carries the notices "Please note that as of December 15, 2025, Access Advance has acquired this HEVC/VVC program." and "This webpage is now managed by Video Codec Licensing LLC, a subsidiary of Access Advance." Access Advance describes the result as a "one-stop shop" for licensing HEVC and VVC, and has stated its intention to consolidate the programmes.

Published rates

VCL Advance (formerly the Via LA HEVC/VVC programme). The published rate structure includes a royalty-free tier of 0.00 USD for the first 100,000 units, with 0.30 USD (Region 1) or 0.20 USD (Region 2) per unit from unit 100,001 onward; the exemption is stated to be available to one legal entity within an affiliated group. An annual enterprise cap of 30,000,000 USD applies. The page states that the license extends to devices implementing the technology. These rates were published under Via LA and have been carried over on the same page since the acquisition.

HEVC Advance. The pool Access Advance has operated all along. Its public pages describe four categories — mobile devices; connected home and consumer devices plus HEVC software; 4K UHD and above televisions and displays; and HEVC content on physical digital media — and state that it licenses HEVC decoders and encoders in consumer HEVC products, whether delivered in devices, in software, or through cloud-based services. Specific rates are not published on the public page; visitors are directed to request an exemplar agreement or contact the licensing team.

Sources: Access Advance: HEVC/VVC program acquisition announcement (2025-12-15) / Access Advance: VCL Advance / HEVC/VVC programme (now managed by Video Codec Licensing LLC; carries the rates) / Via Licensing Alliance formation announcement (2023) / Access Advance HEVC Advance / Access Advance "What do we license" / IAM: End of Velos joint licensing programme

What can actually become a problem in commercial use and redistribution

With that established, here is where the issues sit for common architectures. The table indicates where the questions lie; it does not determine whether a license is required.

That last row is, in fact, the pragmatic answer many web services have landed on. Deciding not to handle HEIC at all is itself a risk management measure.

Why browsers cannot display HEIC

Everything above shows up directly in browser support. According to caniuse.com, as of the research date the only browser with native HEIF/HEIC display is Safari 17 and later. Chrome, Firefox and Edge do not support it.

caniuse gives the reason: HEIC is complex and expensive to license, which makes it hard for browsers to support, while AVIF and JPEG XL provide free licenses and are designed to supersede it. So "Chrome cannot open my .heic" is not an implementation backlog — it is a direct consequence of the licensing structure described in this article.

Safari can display it because Apple's platforms already carry an HEVC decoder at the system level. The browser is not shipping a decoder of its own.

Source: caniuse.com: HEIF/HEIC image format

Where AVIF and JPEG XL fit in

AVIF stores AV1-compressed images in a container of the same family as HEIF. AV1 was developed by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) on a royalty-free basis, and that is the key difference from HEVC. Browser support is also considerably wider than for HEIC.

However, royalty-free does not mean zero patent risk. Sisvel began selling licenses to an AV1 patent pool in 2020. Following that pool's launch, AOMedia maintained its position that AV1 overcomes the environment of "high patent royalty requirements and licensing uncertainty". Note that this is an expression of confidence in AV1, not an assessment that Sisvel creates that environment. Either way, royalty-free is the policy of the sponsoring organisation and its members; it is not a guarantee that no outside party will assert patents.

Even so, the relative risk with AVIF is clearly lower. HEVC has active pools with published paid rates, while AV1 has a broad royalty-free grant declared by the developing organisation. If you are choosing an image format from scratch, AVIF or WebP is the straightforward call.

Sources: Sisvel: Video Coding Platform (AV1) / Wikipedia: AV1

What we could not verify

For accuracy, here is what we could not confirm. Nothing below is stated definitively in this article.

• Whether any patent claims are asserted over the HEIF container layer itself. As covered above, Nokia's reference implementation license is a non-commercial grant and cannot support a claim that the container is free to use commercially. Whether claims exist over the container layer could not be confirmed from public sources. There is no basis here for stating that the container is royalty-free.
• Whether a still-image-only (HEIF) implementation is explicitly within the scope of the HEVC pool licenses. Neither the VCL Advance nor the HEVC Advance public pages mention HEIF or still images; both frame HEVC as a video codec. The treatment of a still-image-only decoder cannot be determined from public information.
• Specific rates for software-only implementations not tied to a device. VCL Advance publishes per-device rates. HEVC Advance lists software in scope but does not publish rates.
• When Access Advance will complete the programme consolidation, and the resulting rate structure. The acquisition is public, but the rate structure the combined programmes will settle on was not published as of the research date. This is the item most likely to change.
• Whether an application developer needs a separate license when relying on the operating system's built-in support. This could not be determined from public information.
• The existence and scope of claims by patent holders outside the pools. Pools are not exhaustive, and this is not something public sources can settle.
• The remaining term of valid patents in each jurisdiction. The first edition of HEVC dates to 2013 and some standard essential patents are approaching expiry, but filing dates vary individually and no blanket conclusion is possible.

Summary: a checklist for deciding

1. Separate HEIF (container) from HEVC (codec). They are distinct units of rights clearance — that is the starting point. Do not assume the container side is free. Nokia's reference implementation license is non-commercial and supports no commercial conclusion. What has published paid rates is the codec side.
2. Check the license of each implementation you use. libheif is LGPL v3, libde265 is LGPL v3, x265 is GPL v2. Reading only versus reading and writing changes the picture.
3. Open source compliance and patent rights are different procedures. Satisfying one does not resolve the other.
4. The pools are consolidating under Access Advance. Velos Media exited, MPEG LA merged into Via LA in 2023, and on December 15, 2025 Access Advance acquired Via LA's HEVC/VVC programme, now run as VCL Advance by its subsidiary Video Codec Licensing LLC. Any source saying "there are two pools" is stale.
5. The most reliable risk reduction is not implementing or shipping HEVC yourself. Defer to the OS or the browser, or design so that HEIC is never accepted.
6. For new work, prefer AVIF and WebP — while remembering that royalty-free is not an absolute guarantee.
7. Take the final decision to a qualified attorney. This article is input to a decision, not the decision.