Not useless, just not as good as Jarek liked to claim. It's a neat technique but hardly a breakthrough. In the end, for AV1, Daala_EC was better.
As for 'needed a defensive patent', need is the wrong word. In the current patent game, you pile up defensive patents to be used in aggregate as part of a MAD-style game. It sounds insane and it is-- but it's also currently the least insane option.
In any case, Google isn't technically in the wrong here. They're not patenting jarek's work, they're patenting improvements they made to it that were necessary to use it in AV1, which they dedicated engineers to do because Jarek declined to do it himself. Only after Google put in that work (and implemented multiple suggested improvements on top of it to try to bring its performance up) could we even measure the results.
But just because Google isn't wrong, doesn't mean they weren't assholes. Having negotiated with them for things in the past, they will promise the moon and the sun and the sky, and commit only to the parts that get them what they want. I can fully believe they verbally promised Jarek far more than he got.
As for 'needed a defensive patent', need is the wrong word. In the current patent game, you pile up defensive patents to be used in aggregate as part of a MAD-style game. It sounds insane and it is-- but it's also currently the least insane option.
In any case, Google isn't technically in the wrong here. They're not patenting jarek's work, they're patenting improvements they made to it that were necessary to use it in AV1, which they dedicated engineers to do because Jarek declined to do it himself. Only after Google put in that work (and implemented multiple suggested improvements on top of it to try to bring its performance up) could we even measure the results.
But just because Google isn't wrong, doesn't mean they weren't assholes. Having negotiated with them for things in the past, they will promise the moon and the sun and the sky, and commit only to the parts that get them what they want. I can fully believe they verbally promised Jarek far more than he got.