Articles & Reviews
News Archive
Forums
Premium
Contact
Categories

Computers Display Drivers Graphics Cards Linux Gaming Memory Motherboards Processors Software Storage Operating Systems Peripherals

The Last MPEG-4 Visual Patent Has Expired

Written by Michael Larabel in Multimedia on 19 July 2026 at 10:24 AM EDT. 43 Comments

If you are looking for a reason to celebrate today, the last of the MPEG-4 Part 2 patents expired today.

While the US and EU patents around MPEG-4 Part 2 expired in recent years, until today there remained one patent still active in Brazil. This final patent was BRPI0109962B1 - "process for storing and processing image information from successive images over time".

The VIA Licensing Alliance confirmed that this was the final MPEG-4 Visual patent and indeed expiring today, 19 July 2026.

MPEG-4 last patent

Great to see this day finally realized given the prevalence of MPEG-4.

43 Comments

OpenAPV Sees Big Update For Advancing The Advanced Professional Video Codec

DaVinci Resolve 21.1 Released - Now With AI Assistant Integration

Shotcut 26.9 Video Editor Beta Brings UI Improvements, Better Audio Quality

Audacity 4.0 Audio Editor Released With Qt6 Based UI

OpenShot 4.0 Released In Adapting Video Editor UI To Qt6

About The Author

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.