Jarek Duda, a computer scientist at the Jagiellonian University in Poland, invented an open source data compression method called Asymmetric Numeral Systems (ANS) in 2014. Now Google is going to file a patent for its ANS-implemented video compression method. The original author has been dissatisfied, and the battlefield has expanded from Europe to the United States.
The ANS data compression algorithm invented by Jarek Duda is very efficient and is 30 times faster than the previous method. Because he wanted to ensure that everyone could use the algorithm, he did not apply for an ANS patent, and this algorithm was also used by various major Widely used by technology companies, including the ZStandard compressor for Facebook, Apple's LZFSE compressor, and Google's Draco 3D compressor, etc. The controversy was that Google applied ANS to video compression encoding and attempted to encode it. Method to apply for a patent.
However, due to the notion of text compression and image compression, Google uses ANS to express a relatively frequent video pattern with a short bit string. Jarek Duda believes that Google’s patent is nothing but an ANS application. In the traditional video compression, these methods are the same, he does not agree with this new patent Google has added an additional innovation invention. Although the final result has not yet been released, but the preliminary judgment of the European Patent Office in February support Jarek Duda's statement.
Google told the foreign media ArsTechnica through a spokesperson that they have a long-term commitment to open-source codecs, such as VP8, VP9, and AV1 formats, and that these codec owners can use the license free of charge. A similar license will be obtained. Jarek Duda disagrees with this statement. However, the final result still needs to wait until the European and US Patent Office's ruling.