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 BRPI0109962 B1 - "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.
Great to see this day finally realized given the prevalence of MPEG-4. The expiration marks the end of a long licensing era for one of the most widely deployed video coding standards in history. Developers and companies worldwide can now implement MPEG-4 Part 2 without any patent encumbrances in any jurisdiction.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing