AWS says you're on your own if media codec patent owners come knocking

Exclusive Amazon is warning users of its media services that it will not protect them against patent infringement claims relating to media codec technology supported by those services.

In a February 2 notification sent to relevant customers, the cloud giant says it is updating its Service Terms to specify it does not have "defense or payment obligations for third-party patent claims against you related to use of these services for audio/video encoding, decoding, or transcoding."

The services in question are AWS Elemental MediaLive, AWS Elemental MediaConvert, Amazon Interactive Video Service, Chime SDK, Amazon GameLift Streams, and Amazon Kinesis Video Services.

Explaining the reason for this decision, AWS says some patent holders of media codec technology are "increasingly refusing to license service providers like AWS," or else do not offer reasonable terms that will protect customers.

Some patent holders are demanding license payments "that far exceed the value of their ...