Yes I see your point, and multiple cases of prior art leaves the patent open to infringement lawsuits, as well as weakening it's defense purpose. Another reason not to make patents excessively broad.
On Thu, Sep 2, 2021, 10:21 AM Stefan Stenzel <[email protected]> wrote: > Reasons for a patent: > > - trolling > - defense against trolls > - big patent portfolio to make company look good > - protection of original ideas > > The latter seems unlikely in this case, too many obvious cases of prior > art. > > I could also claim multiple prior art cases where frequency domain data is > encoded and transmitted. > > Stefan > > > > > On 2. Sep 2021, at 3:12 , Zhiguang Zhang <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Brian, > > > > > > i see, i didn't really catch the comprehensive terminology of the word > 'encoding' > > > > that said, for some reason this patent appears extremely broad, as if > they are trying to patent a software methodology for any media codec > container, which AFAIK is what a specification is supposed to be for. > could be wrong of course ... > > > > > > - Eric > > > > On Wed, Sep 1, 2021 at 9:05 PM Brian Willoughby <[email protected]> > wrote: > > The 'T' in "FFT" stands for Transform. This patent is not about the > transform, but about the encoding of the frequency data. FFT libraries, > whether open source or closed, do not encode the raw frequency data. FFT > libraries store frequency domain data in an array of complex numbers, > without any meta data or other encoding. > > > > This would be equivalent to the difference between RAW audio sample > files with no headers, versus AIFF, RIFF/WAV, CAF, or other encodings of > the audio samples. It's far easier to share audio using standard file > format encodings. > > > > The patent even cites graphics file formats as an example. Raw pixel > data is difficult to process without standard formats to encode the data > and metadata. > > > > Caveat: The language of patents is often distinct from the terms used in > engineering. So, it's possible that I misinterpreted this patent. > > > > Brian Willoughby > > > > > > On Sep 1, 2021, at 14:39, Zhiguang Zhang <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > Hey music-dsp list > > > > > > > > > Any idea why someone would want to patent essentially what an open > source FFT library (and I can name several) does? > > > > > > https://patents.google.com/patent/US11024322B2 > > > > > > Disclaimer: this US patent is from a previous employer > > > > > > > > > -ez > > > >
