For most people, a 25-year-old video patent expiring sounds like a piece of legal housekeeping that has nothing to do with their computers.But for Linux users, it removes one more obstacle that has historically made something as basic as playing a video more complicated than it should be.Here’s everything you need to know and what this means about your media usage.
Here’s what happened After 25 long years, this video patent finally expired Close As reported by Phoronix, on July 19, 2026, the Brazilian patent BRPI0109962B1 finally expired.Titled "process for storing and processing image information from successive images over time," the patent belonged to Siemens AG and was part of MPEG-4 Visual, or Part 2 — the video standard better known through its two famous implementations, DivX and Xvid.You can read the whole thing on Google Patents if you want.
Now, if you’ve been keeping up with patent laws pertaining to media codecs on Linux — perhaps you’re a Fedora user — you might have heard that the patents covering MPEG-4 Part 2 had already expired.And you’d be partly correct.You see, no single global patent covers a technology.
Patents covering the same technology can exist in multiple countries.According to Wikimedia, the US patent for MPEG-4 Part 2 (US 6959046) expired on December 7, 2022, while the EU patent (EP 1279291) expired on April 9, 2021.Brazil’s was among the last remaining patents, and it has now expired.
Finally, DivX and Xvid are no longer encumbered by this particular patent and can be distributed in Brazil — and the rest of the world — without this patent posing a legal obstacle.This post from XDA goes more in-depth into the history and other technicalities surrounding the patent.What this means and why it matters Let’s get nerdy about formats and codecs Before going further, it’s worth spotlighting a few terms to make sure we’re all on the same page.
First, MPEG-4 isn’t a codec, but a set of standards used to compress and process audio and video data.At the time of writing, it consists of 34 separate parts, each focusing on specific tools and formats.Part 14 of MPEG-4 refers to the MP4 file format — one of, if not the most popular digital multimedia container formats.
An MP4 file can contain video, audio, subtitles, and images.Whatever multimedia it’s storing — whether audio, video, or both — uses a specific codec to compress the data while maintaining high quality.MPEG-4 Part 2 is an example of a Visual codec, and it was used by codecs such as Xvid and DivX.
Now, because the codec was protected by patents, it presented legal complications for people, particularly developers, distributing the codec.For example, Fedora and openSUSE famously stopped shipping certain proprietary multimedia codecs with their distros.Users had to download them manually, often from third-party repositories.
However, with the patents gone, developers can freely distribute the necessary software without worrying about patent-related legal issues.This is especially important in the Linux and open source space, where solo developers and companies often operate with modest budgets and can’t necessarily afford a legal team.Patent-unencumbered open standards are crucial to building a thriving open-source ecosystem.
Related 5 free and open-source (FOSS) apps that are better than paid alternatives Professional-grade software without the price tag.Posts 9 By Dibakar Ghosh This still doesn’t completely solve the problem, though Real relief still seems to be four years away While it’s great news that MPEG-4 Part 2 codecs can now be used freely without worrying about licensing issues, it’s still not the relief we in the Linux community have been waiting for.Xvid and DivX are quite old and are largely considered legacy codecs.
They can be useful for playing old video archives or maintaining compatibility with old hardware, but that’s a fairly niche use case.At the time of writing, H.264/AVC is one of the more dominant and widely supported video codecs.This points to MPEG-4 Part 10, which is still heavily patent-encumbered.
According to Wikimedia, the patents covering the most commonly used H.264 profiles will expire in late 2030, with the expiration of this Dolby patent, BRPI0304568B1.And, as it happens, this one is also in Brazil.As such, the Linux and open source communities have to hold their breath for four more years.
After that, at least the core multimedia space should be largely patent-unencumbered, and we can start playing videos immediately after installing Fedora — no need for third-party repositories.Related How open source quietly won the software wars An open relationship with plenty of benefits for all.Posts 29 By Sydney Butler
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