The Last MPEG-4 Visual Patent Has Expired
The Final MPEG-4 Visual Patent Officially Expires
Written by Michael Larabel | Multimedia Category | Published: 19 July 2026, 10:24 AM EDT
If you are searching for a reason to celebrate today, look no further: the very last patent associated with MPEG-4 Part 2 has finally lapsed.
While the legal restrictions in the European Union and the United States vanished several years ago, a single remaining holdout persisted in Brazil until today.
The Final Legal Hurdle
The specific patent that has finally reached its end is BRPI0109962B1. This patent covered a "process for storing and processing image information from successive images over time" Expired.
The VIA Licensing Alliance has officially verified that this was the concluding MPEG-4 Visual patent and that its expiration date was indeed today, 19 July 2026. Given how ubiquitous the MPEG-4 standard has become, it is a welcome relief to see this milestone reached.
Patent Summary Table
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Patent ID | BRPI0109962B1 |
| Region | Brazil |
| Subject | Image information processing over time |
| Confirmation Source | VIA Licensing Alliance |
| Expiration Date |
Expiration Timeline
Related Multimedia Developments
The world of media encoding continues to evolve rapidly. Recent updates include:
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- Vulkan: FFmpeg has introduced the APV encoder.
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- AMD: Has contributed an ONNX Runtime backend to the FFmpeg DNN filter.
- Shotcut 26.6 Beta: Included various bug fixes and VST2 plugin support via OpenFX.
About the Author: Michael Larabel Michael is the founder and primary writer for Phoronix.com (est. 2004), dedicated to improving the Linux hardware ecosystem. With a portfolio of over 20,000 articles, he covers graphics drivers, system performance, and hardware support. He is also the creator of:
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- Phoromatic
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Connect with him via Twitter, LinkedIn, or at
MichaelLarabel.com.
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