Not With a Bang, But a Whimper

Somewhere in São Paulo in 2001, a patent examiner approved Brazilian filing BR PI0109962-0, assigned to Siemens AG, covering some sliver of what would become the MPEG-4 Visual standard. Today, twenty-five years later, that patent's term has run out. And with it - quietly, without a press release, without so much as a blog post from the people collecting the checks - the last known living patent in the MPEG-4 Visual Patent Portfolio expired.

Via Licensing Alliance, the patent pool administrator formerly known as MPEG LA, publishes a running attachment listing every "Expired Patent" in each of its programs, updated periodically as a courtesy to licensees who no longer owe them money. TheJuly 1, 2026, revision of the MPEG-4 Visual attachment runs pages of dead patents, stretching back to e…