News Microsoft patents GPU video encoding

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2010/10/13/ms-patents-gpu-video-encoding/1

 

What a farce. Patents are a waste of time, especially when the legal red tape is way too far behind the development pace of modern industry. This patent in particular is ludicrous. It's like someone patenting petrol today and demanding royalties, despite petrol's mainstream use for neigh on 100 years.
I'm going to go patent the wheel.

 

agreed, more patent BS just waiting for the trolls

 

@Instagib: in fairness, this is different to your petrol analogy. Microsoft applied for this patent back in 2004, before nvidia or OpenCL had their video encoding software released. They patented the idea, although whether or not it was their idea or whether they have or are intending to implement it is another matter. I do think it's a bollucks patent as other competitors are now established, and this has the potential to cut them off after they've invested a lot.

I'm guessing it's the US patent office that granted this then..

 

So they managed to patent using a multi-purpose processor that isn't a CPU as a video encoding platform?

...

 

It is possible the main reason they patented it is so that no one else can which will protect them from law suites later.

 

This is one of the problems with patents, they can take over 4 or 5 + years to grant after the original application due to the searches which are required and madatory waiting periods (in case someone wants to challenge the application).

I am waiting to hear about a patent for something I worked on last year but the predictions at the moment are it will be another 3 years until it is granted, if at all

 

Patends should only be given out for real existing and build stuff. Patending general ideas is total bs.

patending a working piece of hardware or software = OK
patending the idea of the above = not OK

 

Insane. 'nuff said really.

 

Not true, say you or I have an idea that no-one else is using but don't have the finance to put that idea in to a working piece of hardware or software, should we lose out when someone else comes up with the same idea or hears of ours? No. We should be able to protect it.

 

The patenting of ideas is stifling production, because some trolls just keep the patents for legal action later, they don't actually produce.

What we need is a patent system that gives you a certain amount of time to produce a working sample, and then the patent can be attributed.
A year or two to production might be fair. for a prototype, just to show you are serious....

 

This could be good and bad, Good if it works like DX and microsoft design a standard for GPGPU video processing. It could be bad however since Microsoft haven't a clue about hardware design when it comes to GPGPU. Depending on the scope of the patient could companies get round this by saying something like a CUDA video encoder avoiding naming GPGPU anywhere?

 

That's unfortunate, yes, but I can live with it actually.

The problem is, that alot of patends these days are based on very general ideas, that are not further explained or detailed. These very general ideas should simply not be protected by patends.

The idea of offloading some calculations from the CPU to the GPU to enhance videoplayback is way too general and I know 5 year olds that come up with ideas like that randomly. It's just too general, too simple and basic of an idea.

If Microsoft has a more detailed idea of how to offload the calculations from the CPU to the GPU, then they should get a patend for this specific way of doing so.

So patends should be given only for concrete solutions, not the basic idea of possibilities.

 

yay someone has been listening to me about patents

 

Smells like BS to me..

 

kind of glad microsoft got the patent over a troll who will sit on it.. if they didn't get it, someone else would have.. be nice to see video encoding integrated into dx

not so good for software makers like badaboom though.. that video encoder rips through encodes in record time even though I barely use it over adobe media encoder because it lacks options.. good for newbies to get it done

hopefully they won't owe money to microsoft now.. I'm not sure how it works far as applied and granted times go- be wrong if it goes back to applied

 

so wait this means all these programs that use GPU acceleration to encode video could now be under threat of being taken out by M$? ugh this isnt good at all >.<

 

Oh so now that I think about it, since OpenCL is open source its probably safe but since CUDA is proprietary its and those that use it is probably the only one that could be screwed, which Im alright with lol. But really patents are just out of control now ~_~

Between M$, Apple, and Google... creativity just cant happen anymore without stepping on one of their patents.

 

i really wish MS would just stop. stick with operating systems and thats it. when you branch too far, you either begin to fail (like the horrid xbox 360 RROD issues), you don't focus enough on 1 product (like zune being unpopular), you take too long (like their mobile phones), and you just look greedy. if ms didn't keep trying to dominate every market that involved a processor and memory, just imagine how much better vista and 7 would have been. they probably wouldnt' have even had to make a windows 7

 

well Apple does the exact same thing, but OSes are on their way out, even M$ admitted to that so they need to branch into other things to continue on but in this manner I dont care for at all. It just slows down progress.