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Domain: gailly.net
Stories and comments across the archive that link to gailly.net.
Comments · 9
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Re:Eternal Darkness?
As I have said tons of times, please read patent law and procedure of the United States. There are many things that you (the Slashdot community) really DO NOT KNOW or UNDERSTAND.
I understand that there are monkeys working at the patent office. After all, how else could you be granted a patent on the impossible? -
Re:French bashingThe French reading this site are often just coders that share our same spirit of OS and Linux and such.
Also consider that Slashdot uses gzip compression to speed up display of its pages. The creator of gzip? A Frenchman.
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Re:Well here's an interesting patent...
Another interesting patent covers the compression of truly random data, which is mathematically impossible. It shows quite well how little thinking is sometimes done before a patent is granted.
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Obvious patents and gzip (Re:The Obvious)Either you ignore the patents or you stop coding. There is no other solution. You can't be a patent lawyer and a coder at the same time.
Jean-Loup Gailly, the author of gzip, tried to be both. He writes:
I have probably spent more time studying data compression patents than actually implementing data compression algorithms. I maintain a list of several hundred patents on lossless data compression algorithms, and I made sure that gzip isn't covered by any of them. In particular, the --fast option of gzip is not as fast it could, precisely to avoid a patented technique.
(from the gzip faq)
He also notes that the US patent office not only accepts "obvious" patents, but also obviously wrong patents -- see his analysis of two complete non-sense patents on data compression.
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All ready has a patent?
This may have already been posted, and if it has sorry, but I thought this may be of interest to some of you.
Jean-loup Gailly (one of the creators of gzip) has written an article on a patent that was granted for compression of truly random data, and how it is not mathematically possible. You can read it here for those that are interested. -
Re:Do patents have any prestige left?
Key words "if it can be show" (that the patent is on something already in use). Somone has to challenge the patent, and that means paying both lawyers AND THE GOVERNMENT to have it reexamined. Very little review goes into patents to make sure they don't have prior art or are even technically possible before they are granted. And reexams very often fail.
Look at patent #5,533,051. What it claims is impossible (compression of every file by at least one bit losslessly, including 2 bit files, i.e. mapping 00, 01, 10, 11 to 0 and 1 losslessly!).
It claims it works even for RANDOM data. Heck that violates laws of information theory regarding entropy and counting theory.
Details here.
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Re:Shannon not so smart...Why the US Patent Office has granted patents that violate his "so-called" theory, and they never make mistakes
NB - Related Pages here and here
Well, the major difficulty I see here is that they will have subtle problems trying to making it commercially viable, since they are robbing peter to pay paul, so to speak. They would never really get off the ground. They would have major hassles licensing it to a major player, for example.
Moral/legal considerations aside.
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Re:Shannon not so smart...Why the US Patent Office has granted patents that violate his "so-called" theory, and they never make mistakes
NB - Related Pages here and here
Well, the major difficulty I see here is that they will have subtle problems trying to making it commercially viable, since they are robbing peter to pay paul, so to speak. They would never really get off the ground. They would have major hassles licensing it to a major player, for example.
Moral/legal considerations aside.
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Shannon not so smart...
Why the US Patent Office has granted patents that violate his "so-called" theory, and they never make mistakes