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Yeah, that's always tricky, but you are still missing the point. It's not using it for video they have to prove is non obvious but how they are using it for vi

Yeah, that's always tricky, but you are still missing the point. It's not using it for video they have to prove is non obvious but how they are using it for video. Given the elite mathematical skills you'll need to understand all of this I suspect they'll be able to protect it. Good reference on this patent: https://encode.ru/threads/2648-Published-rANS-patent-by-Storeleap/page3 https://encode.ru/threads/2648-Published-rANS-patent-by-Stor...

thechao 9y ago
The genius of ANS is that it isn't a difficult concept to understand. It's a cleverly designed look-up-table. The only really difficult part is the proof of certain parts of the codec window.
- cyphar 9y ago
  But is it difficult to understand for a patent clerk, with a massive time crunch and likely not-incredibly-deep knowledge about information theory? Software patents are dangerous for many reasons, but the fact that they're so easy to get is quite worrying.
cma 9y ago
https://www.google.com/patents/US20170164007 https://www.google.com/patents/US20170164007 Claim one: none of the transform block stuff etc. is new. The only thing added is: > processing a binary flag or bit using the Boolean ANS decoder to generate an output value for the binary flag or bit using the ANS state; and >processing a token using the symbol ANS decoder to generate an output value for the token using the ANS state; That's just slotting existing ANS implementation as a module. Other entropy encoders were used in that exact stage prior to this. The other claims 2-8 just add on ANS optimizations that aren't video specific whatsoever. Things including using a bytestream instead of a bitstream. If any of those were a significant invention by the filee (I'm not going to rule that out, someone please chime in if there was one), why didn't they also patent their application to the entropy encoding stage of image encoding? Or the entropy encoding stage of all sorts of other compression applications? I haven't read through all the others below claim 8, they look similar with the main variation being using instructions stored in "non-transitory memory" (hardware decoders), but there might be something more video-specific there.

thechao 9y ago

The genius of ANS is that it isn't a difficult concept to understand. It's a cleverly designed look-up-table. The only really difficult part is the proof of certain parts of the codec window.

cyphar 9y ago
But is it difficult to understand for a patent clerk, with a massive time crunch and likely not-incredibly-deep knowledge about information theory? Software patents are dangerous for many reasons, but the fact that they're so easy to get is quite worrying.

cma 9y ago

https://www.google.com/patents/US20170164007 https://www.google.com/patents/US20170164007 Claim one: none of the transform block stuff etc. is new. The only thing added is: > processing a binary flag or bit using the Boolean ANS decoder to generate an output value for the binary flag or bit using the ANS state; and >processing a token using the symbol ANS decoder to generate an output value for the token using the ANS state; That's just slotting existing ANS implementation as a module. Other entropy encoders were used in that exact stage prior to this. The other claims 2-8 just add on ANS optimizations that aren't video specific whatsoever. Things including using a bytestream instead of a bitstream. If any of those were a significant invention by the filee (I'm not going to rule that out, someone please chime in if there was one), why didn't they also patent their application to the entropy encoding stage of image encoding? Or the entropy encoding stage of all sorts of other compression applications? I haven't read through all the others below claim 8, they look similar with the main variation being using instructions stored in "non-transitory memory" (hardware decoders), but there might be something more video-specific there.