I mean, is a video codec really just "math"? There's a binary payload description and algorithms involved for applying said math as well.
I'm no expert in the field, so I'm actually asking in good faith here...
I'm no expert in the field, so I'm actually asking in good faith here...
Practically this means that every encoder / decoder for patent encumbered formats has to have some form of licensing just to interact with the format even if they somehow reverse engineered the specification and built a cleanroom implementation (at least as far as I understand it, IANAL)
Patents on processes and methods are pretty common. Dismissing it as "they just patented some math" and then falling back to saying "oh, lambda calculus" -- I think you can do better :-)
But, yes, I'm sure the patents suck.
Fourier could call his transform a "process" all he wants, but that does not make it patentable.
So yes, "oh, math."
I'm not in favour of patents at all, but the entire "it's math" argument has always seemed exceedingly weak to me.
Rather than providing a basis of not allowing software to patented, I think it makes the statement "X can be encoded as math" trivially true - and therefore uninteresting.
In so far as there is value in patents on any systematic procedure at all, the position that "software should not be patentable because it can be encoded as math" is completely untenable.
Think of the guy who invented the equi-tempered scale. All throughout history you had to make instruments that are tuned to play in one scale. Now you can suddenly make instruments that can play all of them. Solves a real problem from music by making an improvement in the representation, so it can be viewed as all math. But is it really "just" math?
Find a single US patent that "claims" maths as GP argued. It doesn't exist.
> 1. For a bitstream comprising a first video picture, a second video picture, and a third video picture, a method of decoding comprising: computing a particular value that is based on (i) a first order difference value between an order value for the third video picture and an order value for the first video picture, and (ii) a second order difference value between an order value for the second video picture and the order value for the first video picture; computing a particular motion vector for the second video picture based on the particular value and a motion vector for the third video picture; and decoding at least one video picture by using the computed motion vector.
That certainly sounds like math to me.
If you’re gainfully employed doing math things that turn into codecs, no.
Patents suck, but they also serve a purpose.
A patent for a drug is just chemistry, which is also just math with a specific ruleset…
Patents are designed to protect work, especially work where most of the effort is in the research / discovery rather than the implementation.
Implementing a video decoder is relatively easy coming up with the algorithms to encode/decode the video efficiently and effectively however is a lot of work.
It’s a tough, nuanced issue. I don’t think anyone is happy with the system, but many stakeholders have a vested interest.
To discover anything in mathematics, including a new video compression algorithm, you do not need anything else, except a computer. In theory, not even the computer is needed, as you could do everything with pen and paper, but it might require years or centuries.
Chemistry is an experimental science for now, until someone would find a method to solve the equations of quantum mechanics for non-trivial systems.
A lot of mathematics is used in chemistry but at its base chemistry remains experimental, because all the mathematical models used in chemistry to predict some facts use a large number of model parameters that have been determined experimentally. There are no truly "ab initio" mathematical predictions in chemistry.
Using mathematics in chemistry allows a significant reduction in the number of chemical experiments that must be done to discover anything new, but they cannot be eliminated yet.
Any discovery in mathematics can be easily redone again, by someone else, completely independently, and this actually happens extremely frequently.
There do not seem to exist many reasons that can justify why the later discoverers must be punished to pay money to others in order to use the mathematical relations that they have discovered themselves, even if by some chance someone else happened to discover the same relations earlier.
For mathematical discoveries, there are little grounds to claim that the first discoverer should be able to recover any expenses, as most of the strictly necessary expenses are just in the salaries of people and it is very difficult to estimate what percentage of those expenses had actually contributed to the discovery.
On the other hand, for inventions referring to chemical substances, or to mechanical, thermal or electrical devices and so on, a lot of experiments with physical devices must be made and the experimentation costs can indeed be very high, so it can be argued that it might be good for a society to encourage such experiments by promising a temporary monopoly for the exploitation of the results, as long as the duration of the monopoly is not excessive.
For the kind of minor innovations that are the object of most recent patents, a reduced patent duration seems more appropriate, e.g. 10 years.
A patent duration of 20 years or more seems acceptable only for a few patents for which the acceptance criteria should be much more strict than they have become recently, i.e. such patents should really be "non-obvious for those skilled in the field", and not just trivial combinations of formerly known devices or methods.
Finding the methods is the discovery and there are a lot of experimental work that goes into video and audio encoding as well including perceptual measurements and actually coming with a method that can be efficiently implemented in both software and hardware.
There are plenty of patents that don’t require nearly as much experimental or hard science work as developing a new encoding method.
This isn’t even about discovering anything new in mathematics although that can happen it’s about a novel implementation which does deserve patent protection whether you like it or not.
If one can literarily get a patent for a new pressure valve with just using a pen and paper or in even a better analogy a purely computerized simulation your argument simply falls apart.
The argument about it being non obvious is also has nothing to do with software as many things in computer science (since that is the field most relevant in this rather than software development) can be very much non obvious to experts in the field too.
And that is the gist of issue here the software implementation isn’t what is actually protected by the patent that might be protected by copy right. The patent itself covers a method which as you said can be implemented even on a piece of paper if you want to do things really slowly.
However you are right that for comparing different compression methods and for deciding which is the best method of several alternative methods having the same compression ratio, it is far better to do experiments with humans, instead of relying on some mathematical criterion, e.g. the distance between the original signal and the decompressed signal, according to some simple metric.
So I agree that a new video or audio compression algorithm may incorporate some new knowledge about a physical system, i.e. about the perceptual abilities of humans.
However that would justify patenting only some features of the algorithm that have the clear purpose of taking advantage of some characteristics of the human vision which have been newly discovered and described by the patent authors.
The valid claims cannot cover any mathematical tricks to improve the efficiency of the algorithm or any characteristics of the human vision that have already been exploited in the patents for older video compression algorithms.
I am pretty sure that no patent for video compression algorithms restricts itself to such reasonable patent claims.
Regarding software, the main problem is what makes you think that the fact that you happened to be the first to write a program that solves a certain problem, gives you any right to forbid to everybody else to solve the same problem.
It is guaranteed that there are thousands of other programmers who would solve the same programming problem as well as you or even better, without knowing anything about your solution, but they just happened to not face that problem before you.
Any kind of software is a combination of known elements, which have been used for the first time in the early times of the computer industry. Those early algorithms were much more innovative in comparison to the existing practice, than those that are patented now. Had they been patented, no software company, e.g. Microsoft, could have ever appeared and grown.
All those who have patented software in recent years stand on the shoulders of the early programmers who have not patented much more valuable ideas, which are now freely incorporated in the patented software.
I honestly can’t fathom why software engineers think that they are unique every patent, every invention is built on prior knowledge this is why every patent has a whole section of prior art we all stand on the shoulders of giants.
But again video encoding patents have rarely anything to do with software they are far more generic than that and also predate software by decades.
Here is one of the earliest examples of a video encoding patent I could find https://www.freepatentsonline.com/3679821.html
What exactly do you find here not to be worthy granting a patent for?