I believe the technique at issue is a way to compress the data -- using standard codecs like JPEG2000 -- without first de-bayering the image. I imagine it was pretty novel when the patent was filed, which would've been the mid '00s. (The Red One used this technique, and it launched in ~2007.)
Whenever there is some data which passes through several conversion stages, there is a certain point in the chain of transformations where compression is more efficient than in the other points, so it is always necessary to choose carefully where to insert a compression transformation.
For example, if you aggregate some files into an archive file and then you encrypt the archive file, a compression step must be inserted between the concatenation of the input files and the encryption step.
Inserting the compression before concatenation or after encryption will give much worse compression ratios.
The same is true for any chain of transformations. It is always necessary to identify the point where the compression must be inserted, which for image processing in a camera happens to be before debayering.
Absolutely anyone who would receive the task to add compression to an image processing chain of algorithms would start by making tests to determine where to insert the compression.
Discovering the claim of the patent does not require any kind of creativity or any other special skill in the domain. It would have happened automatically to the first one who happened to work at this problem.
I don't think a company should be granted a 20-year monopoly just because they were the first to write an idea down. I don't see how patents on run-of-the-mill innovations further innovation in the economy as a whole.
Even if there were no such thing as patents, companies would have begun compressing individual channels prior to de-bayering, because it makes sense and is a fairly obvious thing to try. The patent system didn't spur innovation in this case. It just allowed one company to demand a rent from everyone else.
There is a theory that patent rights can encourage inventors to publish their invention, so that everybody benefits in the long run. This is a nice theory, except it doesn't hold up in practice (at least in the tech industry) because (1) patent language is so obfuscated that it is not a useful source of knowledge; and (2) the threat of triple damages means that no (honest) practitioner in their right mind would ever read a patent other than their own.
It is possible that in other, slower moving industries, people do get some minor value from reading expired patents. Though somehow I doubt it: in our industry, the useful inventions spread through other channels, and I suspect the same is true everywhere.