Re: [Patents] Cryptographic patent... and research.

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

> If you look at the claims in the MP3-related patents, as listed at
>
>       http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/effects/mpeg/
>
> you may moreover find them not so different, e.g.
>
>       EP 954909
>       http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/txt/ep/0954/909/
>
>    A method for coding an audio signal, comprising the
>    following steps: transforming a temporal audio signal to the frequency
>    domain in order to obtain spectral values of the temporal audio
>    signal; performing a prediction of the spectral values in relation to
>    frequency in order to obtain spectral residual values; detecting noise
>    areas in the spectral residual values; noise-substituting the spectral
>    residual values in the noise areas; and introducing information
>    concerning the noise areas and the noise-substitution in side
>    information of a coded audio signal.
>
> Terms like "spectral value" or "audio signal" or "noise" refer at best to
> abstractions from something physical.

Here's a more basic patent from the MP3 people (Karlheinz Brandenburg et
al) for which the EU Commission's IPR Helpdesk nominated Brandenburg
"inventor of the month" in 2001:

        EP 0287578
        http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/txt/ep/0287/578/

Claim 1 as granted by EPO reads:

 Digital coding process for transmitting and/or storing acoustic
 signals, specifically music signals, comprising the following steps.

 - N samples of the acoustic signal are converted into M spectral
   coefficients;

 - said M spectral coefficients are subjected to quantisation at a first
   level;

 - after coding by means of an entropic encoder the number of bits
   required to represent all the quantized spectral coefficients is checked;

 - when the required number of bits does not correspond to a specified
   number of bits quantization and coding are repeated in subsequent
   steps, each at a modified quantization level, until the number of bits
   required for representation reaches the specified number of bits, and

 - additionally to the data bits the required quantization level is
   transmitted and/or stored.

----------------------------

You have here a very simple and well known trial-and-error-loop algorithm,
whose application to "acoustic signals" and an "entropic encoder" must
have constituted a "technical contribution".

The word "entropic" was inserted after examination by the EPO.
Apparently without it the applicant might not have "made a technical
contribution".

Again pro-swpat people should be asked whether this is what they want to
be patentable.  They can hardly respond by saying that this is an
unrepresentative "horror patent".  It was hand-picked by CEC, not by FFII.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-18979927
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
155,000 votes 2000 firms against software patents    http://noepatents.org/