H.265 is a much worse patent minefield than h.264 ever was: the h.265 patents are owned by different patent pools with different licensing terms, some of which even without revenue cap.

The only way to relatively safely produce h.265 content is to be one of these companies in one of the patent pools.

AV1 in contrast is supposed to be free of patents and open for everybody to use. Of course there could still be some patent being violated and there's no legal entity to fight for you if you get sued, but given the mess around h.265, this might still be the better option.

AV1 is backed by multiple soft- and hardware manufacturers, so between that, the free licensing, and the legal murkiness of h.265, this might yet take off.

I certainly hope so. It would be the first time in decades that the best media codec is also patent free and useable by everybody.