Well, there is an Australian patent for the WHEEL, so how do I file a patent for FIRE?
Some of these patents and copyrights are ridiculous.
There are even some patents on some MATHEMATICS now, since they started allowing software patents. Just using a math formula could cost royalties.
The question is how do we deal with copyrighted DATA here though... Difficult question.
Regarding the possible pachinko filter patent, I have had success finding prior art (which the original patented work may be a derivitave). It helps to study related university thesis papers, and also other very old technical literature. I have traced some of the state-of-the-art compression indexing logic back to papers from 1954.