The MPEG Licensing Association (MPEG LA), which runs one of the two current patent pools for the VVC (H.266) codec, has announced tweaks to its licensing program, which it says are to bring the pool into conformity with market realities. It appears that the MPEG LA is climbing down from its position of VVC software royalties, and removing those royalties for companies that contribute their VVC patents to the pool. Because we do not know how many companies were on the hook for both the $8 million software-only cap and at least $22 million in hardware-based royalties, it is not really possible to gauge the scale of the shift. The first adjustment is a waiver of royalties for software products…