Microsoft Granted A Patent For GPU Video Encoding

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Microsoft Granted A Patent For GPU Video Decoding

Back in 2004 there was a US patent application from Microsoft entitled "Accelerated video encoding using a graphics processing unit" and as of this morning the patent has been approved by the USPTO. Will this now further complicate matters for the Linux graphics stack?..

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=ODY3MQ

[vertex2]

What a fucked up world.
I don't know much about patents, but this kind of stuff sounds ridiculous to me.

[stikonas]

Isn't this a patent for video encoding, not decoding?

[elanthis]

Patent is for ENcoding, not DEcoding.

Is it too hard to actually even read the excerpt you're pasting in before posting sensationalist falsehoods as news?

I think software patents are as utterly unethical and bullshit as any other intelligent computer scientist, but this patent is not relevant to graphics/video drivers or their implementations, and it's actually even a bit novel in that I've never heard of anyone else doing this yet. It's still stupid because the GPU is just another processing unit and offloading calculations to it is natural and obvious (hence OpenGL, DirectCompute, CUDA, etc.), but this is not going to affect anyone in the OSS world besides the video ENcoding library/app developers.

[aznabaal]

US has to 'first to invent' type of patent system.
As much as this patent might seem binding, in reality,
if the case goes to court, it would be almost impossible to enforce.
Since there are many working
implementations of the original idea, determining who was the first
inventor is impossible in practice.
For example, the date of filing is 2004, and nvidia had a working product on the market by this data (GF 6 series).
Therefore, it's one those patents
that is there, however doesn't change anything in practice.

What a fucked up world.
I don't know much about patents, but this kind of stuff sounds ridiculous to me.

[fernandoc1]

What about we patent, processing applications on CPU?
And how about patenting all the characters on the world, so anyone who write a text have to pay us to publish their writings?
Is it possible?

[aznabaal]

It is not possible since it does not meet the non-obviousness patentability requirement.

What about we patent, processing applications on CPU?
And how about patenting all the characters on the world, so anyone who write a text have to pay us to publish their writings?
Is it possible?

[movieman]

It is not possible since it does not meet the non-obviousness patentability requirement.

Nor does video encoding using GPU acceleration.

[aznabaal]

Maybe not now, but in 2004 it probably did meet this requirement.
I do not know the details of the patent office ruling and specifics of
the patent, however encoding streams using specific GPU methods
(not all methods, since the patent has to be about particular implementation not idea itself)
seems pretty non-trivial to me (dating back to 2004 or earlier).
I understand and share the general distrust to patents, but
being opinionated is not the best way to go.
Moreover, like I say, patent is just the first step to court ruling and
is only a recommendation not a right. Many patents are dismissed in court especially in the US.

Nor does video encoding using GPU acceleration.

[movieman]

Maybe not now, but in 2004 it probably did meet this requirement.

I was working on GPUs in 2004 and I can guarantee you that using them for video encoding was pretty damn obvious. If I remember correctly we were even talking with
a third-party about using GPUs for video encoding before then.