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Microsoft Patents GPU-Accelerated Video Encoding
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has just received a patent that grants the company the rights to GPU-accelerated video encoding, which may be the primary technology that takes advantage of the horsepower of the GPU in today's consumer applications. The broad patent covers tasks to perform motion estimation in videos, the use of the depth buffer of the GPU, to determine comprising, collocating video frames, mapping pixels to texels, frame processing using the GPU, and output of data to the CPU."
A Graphics Processing Unit has been used to accelerate video!
If this doesn't qualify as 'obvious' then we are all doomed.
Are they serious? This is virtually the same thing as someone inventing a car and me winning the patent on "driving cars."
Oh look, another patent that shouldn't have been granted. The only thing the modern patent system is good for is buying new boats for patent lawyers. Does this still surprise anyone?
This patent mightn't change much, but it's the weight of the hundreds of patents that's spoiling the AV field.
Microsoft is a member of MPEG-LA, but they pay more royalties than they make from the organisation, so they're probably eager to make their own AV thicket.
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Microsoft
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/MPEG_LA
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Audio-video_patents
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The patent was filed in 2004, and there must be loads of prior art. Companies such as Nvidia and ATI have had GPU-accelerated video encoders for years now.
Regardless, this patent should never have been granted. It's all because of the patent office's massive backlog, and their decision to accept every random patent to reduce it.
Still not enough information. Patent claims can change between the original filing and the version that gets granted by amending the patent application. It's done by trolls... get a patent application going and keep it in limbo. Someone else comes to market with something cool, and you add it to your patent application. If it gets approved, viola! You have a patent that is "back-dated" years before the invention hit the market.
I'd be curious to see exactly what the patent said in 2004 and compare that to the then state-of-the-art.
E pluribus unum
This patent is specifically for running motion compensation calculations on the GPU, and everything else on the CPU. Badaboom runs everything on the GPU, so the patent does not apply.
What is confusing? Microsoft does something. Microsoft applies for a patent on that thing. A patent lawyer who knows very little about the tech in question, has about 600 applications he's currently supposed to be processing, has been instructed that he can't work overtime this week by his boss, but also that he is too far behind on his portfolio and needs to catch up, and who doesn't make near as much as his buddies from law school do to begin with, looks at it. He thinks "I don't even know what half of these words *mean*", then notices that Microsoft filed the patent. Through his haze of pain and frustration he dimly remembers that Microsoft is an "Innovative and economy driving company" and says "fuck it." He hits the "Approve" button.
His boss is happy because his numbers are better this week, and there is no real penalty for approving patents that later get overturned. Even assuming that Microsoft ever attempts to defend the patent rather than just threatening small companies with it in hopes that they'll cave without a court battle.
The things currently wrong with the patent system which this story demonstrates:
1) Patent attorneys often don't understand the tech they are expected to review. This is less of a problem with "real" patents, since the device being patented is just that. A device. If it does what it says it does, in the way it says it does, understanding why isn't all that important. Software is essentially algorithms. If you don't understand them, then judging their uniqueness is difficult.
2) The reviewers in the patent office are phenomenally overworked right now. There are literally tens of thousands of applications backed up. I saw some patent official guy at the end of the Bush administration say that if all applications stopped, right then, he could maybe catch up in a year or two. I don't imagine it's gotten better. Both Bush and Obama have authorized more reviewers, but it seems to be like filling the ocean with a teaspoon.
3) Patent reviewers make a fraction of what patent attorneys in private practice make. This means that they're always looking to get out and get into private firms. Probably not all of them, but like any rational human, most want to make more money and get more respect.
4) There is no real penalty for screwing up. Most patents never get defended in court, because the companies that own them mainly used them as bargaining chips, or to threaten smaller, defenseless, companies. Even if the patent does go to court, it'll take years to invalidate, and no repercussions fall on the approver.
Eliminating software patents would, in one stroke, alleviate or eliminate two of these four problems. Probably the most serious two. It'd be awful nice if it happened. The alternative is probably the whole system collapsing under its own weight eventually.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.