For those interested in the Dolby Digital Plus "Enhanced AC-3" audio compression format for open-source software, the last of the patents for this widely-used format by streaming services and more appears to have expired.

While I am not a lawyer, a few Phoronix readers have written in since yesterday with the belief that the last of the E-AC3 patents have now expired. This does align with prior reporting that the last of the Dolby Digital Plus / Enhanced AC-3 patents would expire in early 2026.

The final patent to expire regarding E-AC3 is [1]US7516064 . According to Google Patents, 2026-01-30 is indeed the adjusted expiration date on it without any indication it's been further extended.

If the Dolby Digital Plus patents have all now expired, this is good news for open-source adoption and opening the door for its more widespread use. Already there is [2]interest in seeing Fedora Linux enabling E-AC3 support once confirmed to be in the legal clear.

It will be interesting to see what happens around this Dolby Digital Plus high efficiency audio codec in the open-source world moving forward.



[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US7516064B2/en?oq=US7516064

[2] https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/dolby-digital-plus-e-ac3-patents-have-now-expired-time-to-add-it-to-fedora/180329