--- title: The Last Of The Dolby Digital Plus "E-AC3" Patents Might... description: The patents covering Dolby Digital Plus (Enhanced AC-3/E-AC3) audio compression format appear to have expired. This widely-used codec by streaming services may... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-last-of-the-dolby-digital-plus-e-ac3-patents-might-now-be-expired-8z0dxsdkj twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The Last Of The Dolby Digital Plus "E-AC3" Patents Might Now Be Expired | daily.dev og:description: The patents covering Dolby Digital Plus (Enhanced AC-3/E-AC3) audio compression format appear to have expired. This widely-used codec by streaming services may... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-last-of-the-dolby-digital-plus-e-ac3-patents-might-now-be-expired-8z0dxsdkj og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/8z0dXSDKj.png og:image:alt: The Last Of The Dolby Digital Plus "E-AC3" Patents Might Now Be Expired og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The Last Of The Dolby Digital Plus "E-AC3" Patents Might Now Be Expired **[Phoronix](https://daily.dev/sources/phoronix)** · 1 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary The patents covering Dolby Digital Plus (Enhanced AC-3/E-AC3) audio compression format appear to have expired. This widely-used codec by streaming services may now be implementable in open-source software without licensing restrictions. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [A 25-year-old Brazilian video patent just expired, ending a lingering legal headache for Linux](https://daily.dev/posts/a-25-year-old-brazilian-video-patent-just-expired-ending-a-lingering-legal-headache-for-linux-wp2xsad1s) · XDA Developers · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [AOMedia Open Audio Codec "OAC" Aims To Be The Successor To Opus](https://daily.dev/posts/aomedia-open-audio-codec-oac-aims-to-be-the-successor-to-opus-8omcd4if5) · Phoronix · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [AV1 — Now Powering 30% of Netflix Streaming](https://daily.dev/posts/av1-now-powering-30-of-netflix-streaming-qexfj3vlm) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-last-of-the-dolby-digital-plus-e-ac3-patents-might-now-be-expired-8z0dxsdkj) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The Last Of The Dolby Digital Plus \"E-AC3\" Patents Might Now Be Expired","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-last-of-the-dolby-digital-plus-e-ac3-patents-might-now-be-expired-8z0dxsdkj","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-last-of-the-dolby-digital-plus-e-ac3-patents-might-now-be-expired-8z0dxsdkj"},"datePublished":"2026-01-31T11:19:53.955Z","dateModified":"2026-01-31T11:20:17.461Z","description":"The patents covering Dolby Digital Plus (Enhanced AC-3/E-AC3) audio compression format appear to have expired. 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