But H.265 and H.266 have the same risk - worse actually, as multiple submarine patents claims have risen again H.265, and there are now multiple licensing organizations that all claim they need to be paid if you want to use H.265, and over a decade later their claims still haven't been legally settled.

To completely avoid risk your only choice is to to use old technology where all the patents have expired (20 years in US), like MPEG-2. The next lowest risk is to use H.264 and VP9 which have been out for a while and whose the patent pools have stabilized over the years (and the original parts of the standard will have their patents expire soon - but not some of the newer profiles). After that I would argue that AV1 is less risky that H.265 and H.266, as a lot of work was put into intentionally avoiding patented technology that was not part of the pool, and no one outside the pool has yet made patent claims against it.