Patents discussed

[Cyan]

A really interesting viewing :

http://patentabsurdity.com/watch.html

I wonder about potential implications on patents in the field of compression...

[Matt Mahoney]

An example of patent absurdity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asure_Software

Asure (then called Forgent) collected $90 million from 30 companies for a patent they claimed on JPEG that the USPTO later ruled was not valid due to prior art. The patent covered the idea of using a single code to represent a run length followed by a second value (the RS codes used in JPEG).

[osmanturan]

@Matt:
BTW, what had happened to the company which claim that it owns very similar to PAQ-ish algorithm (actually with wrong descriptions)? I just wonder.