Patently public domain madness!

Google’s attempt to patent public domain algorithm ANS slated.

Google has a contentious history when it comes to patent applications, and its latest move to patent asymmetric numeral systems (ANS), a widely used data compression algorithm, has attracted a fresh round of criticism. This is mainly due to the developer of ANS, Jarek Duda, who had published his work with the intent that it was for the public domain and free of restrictions.

In an Ars Technica article that goes into the specifics about Google’s patent application and Duda’s objections over it ( http://bit.ly/

LXFANSGoogle), Jarek claims that the technique Google’s trying to patent was suggested by himself in an email exchange in 2014, a claim that a preliminary ruling in February by European patent authorities agrees with. The US Patent Office has now issued a non-final rejection of Google’s application ( http://bit.ly/LXFGoogleRejection), citing Jarek’s work, along with an already existing patent and other evidence. However, as this is a non-final rejection, there is a worry that Google will continue to pursue this application in its bid to make video codecs royalty free.

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has published a scathing post ( http://bit.ly/

LXFEFFANS) where it calls on Google to drop the application, stating that it’s not “okay for one of the world’s biggest companies to get a software patent on a minor tweak to someone else’s work,” and that “ANS should not belong to tech giants willing to push applications through a compliant Patent Office. ANS should belong to all of us.”