To: Staff
From: Dr. N. Ishida

I’ve been having discussions with Legal about the new image compression product. As you know, we were using the traditional run-length encoding algorithm. However, the lawyers tell me we really need to increase our patent portfolio, so I’ve made some modifications.

I’m converting the image to a hexagonal grid and doing the encoding twice at a 60-degree angle. Also, I only record the lengths of the runs of black pixels, not the runs of white pixels between them.

I’m pretty sure this qualifies as “non-obvious”. The only trouble is, I can’t seem to come up with a decompression algorithm...Legal doesn’t seem to mind, but for the sake of our customers could you guys take a look at it?