On August 11, 2025, Access Advance announced that Alibaba Group and ZTE Corporation have officially joined the Video Distribution Patent (VDP) pool as licensors, while Alibaba's streaming platform Youku has joined as a licensee.

Access Advance is a US-based patent pool management organization primarily responsible for the development, operation, and management of core patent pools related to video encoding and decoding technologies.

On July 1, 2025, Access Advance LLC announced the initial list of licensees and licensors for its Video Distribution Patent (VDP) pool, including ByteDance, Kuaishou, and Tencent. The patent pool license covers all four major video codecs currently used by video distribution providers: HEVC (H.265), VVC (H.266), VP9, and AV1.

Access Advance CEO Peter Moller stated: We warmly welcome Alibaba, ZTE, and Youku to join the VDP patent pool. Alibaba and ZTE's participation as licensors brings critical intellectual property assets to the patent pool, while Youku's role as a licensee underscores the flexibility, predictable cost model, and simplified management value the pool offers to large streaming platforms."