Sure the idea of compressing before de-bayering might be obvious. I'm not so sure the actual technique for doing the compression in a manner that also made it e

Sure the idea of compressing before de-bayering might be obvious. I'm not so sure the actual technique for doing the compression in a manner that also made it easy to de-compress while de-bayering is quite so obvious. It probably took quite a bit of experimentation to come up with a number of different ways of separating the colours and compressing the individual colours, and identifying the approach that played best with the de-bayering process. So the basic "compress before de-bayering" idea might not be patentable, but the actual algorithm and specific approach(s) sounds reasonably difficult to refine, and thus patentable.