[rasz]

> Charlie gets a government patent for the invention of, say, dividing five into three equal integers

Hey, you just described S3TC patent! Funnily enough S3 ripped off Apple, copying verbatim Hoffert work at Apple Advanced Technology Group and consequent patents from 1990 (US5046119A) for Apple Video 'road pizza' codec, except their patent added "for texture compression" at the end. The patent is about dividing colorspace between two points by dividing colors by 3 :-) and is directly coped from Apple. Gotta love how wikipedia calls direct copy a "This mode operates similarly to mode 0xC0 of the original Apple Video codec".

Amazingly S3 even had the balls to try and sue Apple for S3TC royalties in 2010. Sadly Apple loves patents and didnt bother trying to invalidate, they were content winning on technicality. S3TC patents are expired now.