The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Aug. 29, 2000
Filed:
Nov. 25, 1997
Paul Lawrence Bradshaw, Santa Cruz, CA (US);
David Maxwell Cannon, Tucson, AZ (US);
Wayne Curtis Hineman, San Jose, CA (US);
Michael Allen Kaczmarski, Tucson, AZ (US);
Robert Michael Rees, Los Gatos, CA (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
Digital data objects containing unused space are reconfigured to facilitate more efficient compression of the data objects. First, a determination is made whether the data object contains regions of unused storage space. Such space may represent deleted files, corrupted data, expired data, etc. If regions of unused storage space exist, they are replaced with a predetermined bit pattern. This bit pattern is specifically chosen so that, if provided as input to a predetermined digital data compression process, it would be compressed with a predetermined predicted compression efficiency. For example, the bit pattern may comprise a repeating sequence of binary zeros, which is optimally compressed by most known compression processes. After reconfiguration of the data object, the data object may be provided as input to the compression process and compressed.