Have the patents for H.263 expired yet?
YES! 😍
Patents possibly affecting use of H.263 video format (which can be played in .mov container by Safari, at least in some versions).
Not to be confused with MPEG-4 part 2 or H.264.
This is an incomplete, unofficial spot check. If you need to check this information for legal reasons, check with a real lawyer!
List pulled from ITU website search and cross-checked manually against Google patent database:
TL;DR[edit]
While it looks like patents that were already granted and listed as such when H.263 went live all expired years ago, there were some additional ones that got added after the 2005 spec update & republication. It's unclear so far whether they apply only to revision 3 ("H.263 plus"?) or back-cover all of H.263. Anyway most of them expired in July 2020 and the last one (US7006576) expired in April 2023.
Patent list[edit]
Telenor AS
Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
- application 08-098629
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
- application PCT/JP97/02320
- application 09-179847
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
- application 97-47795
- application 97-47712
- application 97-42941
- application 97-42942
- application 97-59286
Robert Bosch GmbH
- EP346636B1 - EXPIRED
- EP346635B1 - EXPIRED
- EP279053B1 - EXPIRED
- EP834233B1 - EXPIRED
- EP346637B1 - EXPIRED
- application 505503/96
- application 983219
Netergy Microelectronics, Inc
- US6225923 - EXPIRED
- US6249318 - EXPIRED
- application 09/148367 -> US6807231 B1 - EXPIRED
- US6075554 - EXPIRED
- US6108027 - EXPIRED
- US6160503 - EXPIRED
- US6205177 - EXPIRED
- US6215425 - EXPIRED
Nokia Corporation (2007 additions?)