&#62; <i>It's the person who reverse-engineered your invention and did it a different way</i><p>What is 'a different way' though? Can I create a different implementation of MPEG4? Or is MPEG4 an implementation of 'video encoding' or 'video compression?'<p>In one instance, I can just find another algorithm for encoding/decoding MPEG4 files/streams. In the other instance, I need to create an entirely new format.