[Flac-dev] Blocking and compression.

[Josh Coalson]

--- Wayde Milas <wmilas at rarcoa.com> wrote:
> The last one is truely frightening. AT&T hold the patent. The link
> for
> it is at:
>
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&r=1&l=50&f=G&d=PALL&s1=5025258.WKU.&OS=PN/5025258&RS=PN/5025258
> Trying to read and grok it is mind numbing. the synopsis mentions its
> for arithmitic encoding, but the best I can tell from trying to read
> it,
> its possible to apply it to ANY entropy system that has an estimator
> that is self adapting. 
> 
> I also don't understand how AT&T can hold a patent on something that
> is
> inherent in the arithmetic patent which was awwared before the AT&T
> patnent.
> 
> Unless I'm reading this wrong, which I may be, flac is in violation
> of
> this patent even though its not an arithmetic encoder. Read the
> patent
> and tell me what you think.

this patent does not cover the FLAC reference encoder.  the
entropy coder does not accumulate occurrences of individual
symbol values, as specified in claim 1; it uses a single
measure (mean or variance) of the overall residual distribution.

Josh


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