A pyramid is built bottom to top, not top to bottom. That’s also one of the strengths of the ISO format. You can add/remove layers for arbitrary granularity and still have a valid date.

It is dead AND alive before you check and collapses into dead XOR alive when you check.

But yes, the short description also irked me a little. It’s really hard to write it concisely without leaving out important bits (like we both did too).

That’s a very optimistic view. Not licencing your patent to your competition is absolutely a profit driven decision that harms the end user.