I think you need to go back and re-read the article, or maybe find some other explainer about the state of media encoding licensing, because you're completely m

I think you need to go back and re-read the article, or maybe find some other explainer about the state of media encoding licensing, because you're completely misunderstanding both what AV1 and the EU are doing here. The EU is intervening to protect "patent royalty schemes" because Google/Apple/etc are offering their patents royalty-free (that is, for free). Offering your patents for free is seen as anti-competitive, because the existing media-encoding-patent-licensing industry depends exclusively on royalties from patent trolling to stay alive. So because AV1 is a new codec without patent encumbrance that is offered for free to everyone, it risks disrupting the status quo, and killing the media-encoding-patent-licensing industry. Does that help clarify things?