A 25-year-old video patent just expired, clearing a long-standing Linux headache

A 25-year-old video patent finally expired, lifting a decades-long legal headache for Linux.

Siemens AG filed a video patent in Brazil back in April 2001. According to XDA, it was the last unexpired patent in the MPEG-4 Part 2 portfolio—the technology behind old DivX and Xvid files. That patent expired on July 19, 2026, making the format officially patent-free worldwide.

Why it matters: Free operating systems like Linux struggle with proprietary codecs because licensing fees clash with free distribution. Users often had to enable third-party repositories just to play basic video files. While projects like Fedora started bundling the code anyway in 2023, this expiration removes the legal risk entirely.

Know this: Most modern web video uses H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10), which remains heavily covered by active patents. This change won't affect your daily web browsing, but it cleans up a quarter-century of legal baggage for legacy media.

It took 25 years, but open source is officially done worrying about DivX.