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Simon G Best (talk | contribs) →Range encoding and arithmetic encoding: On Martin's enlightening paper. |
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:::The paper's well worth reading - it's not long, and really does show what range encoding actually is (as it is, after all, held to be the definitive paper). But this, for now, is what I've got to contribute on the matter. Sorry if this is a bit of a long item for the talk page, but I really have managed to get 'into the groove' on range encoding :-)
:::--[[User:Simon G Best|Simon G Best]] 01:38, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
::::I think you misunderstand what I'm saying, especially about the patent issues. The [[term of patent]] in the U.S. is 20 years from the filing date of the application. (I'm also pretty sure that no country has a longer patent period than 20 years.) That means that nothing that was considered [[prior art]] in 1985 could be patented today. This includes range coding. It also includes many forms of [[arithmetic coding]] (see article). But because range coding is more specific than arithmetic coding, implementing range coding in its original form doesn't infringe patents. Implementing arithmetic coding in its original form doesn't infringe patents either, but the water's been muddied enough that people just fear using arithmetic coding; it's hard for a judge to tell what's frivolous and for an engineer to tell what's legal. I realize the same could be argued of range coding, but, as it is a more specific application, one can be more confident in the application not being patented. However, those that want to be really safe will go with Huffman codes and the like, avoiding anything invented after software patents were established. [[User:Calbaer|Calbaer]] 05:57, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
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