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31 Lawsuits Filed Over Alleged JPEG Patent 471

Posted by CowboyNeal from the last-minute-legalities dept.
dcrouch writes "Compression Labs has initiated a lawsuit in the Eastern District of Texas against 31 major companies for infringement of its 4,698,672 patent. The patent, filed in 1986, includes 46 claims for various embodiments of digital signal compression technology and reportedly covers JPEG compression. From the dates on the face of the patent, it appears that it will expire in October 2004. This looming date may have prompted the suit. Compression Labs will certainly have a fight on its hands. A major question will be why the patentee waited so long to stake its claim. The Eastern District of Texas court has established special patent rules that help speed the progression of litigation."
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31 Lawsuits Filed Over Alleged JPEG Patent More

31 Lawsuits Filed Over Alleged JPEG Patent

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  • Submarine patents? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Keith_Beef ( 166050 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:07AM (#8948266)

    I thought there was some specific legislation to stop "submarine patents" like this?

    Beefy.

    • Re:Submarine patents? (Score:4, Informative)

      by kogs ( 221412 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:13AM (#8948298)

      It's not a submarine patent, it was granted and published back in 1987.

      • Re:Submarine patents? (Score:5, Funny)

        by astellar ( 675749 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:24AM (#8948812) Homepage Journal
        "There's no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department on Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now." Douglas Adams. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

        • Arthur Yes, I went round to find them yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call much attention to them had you? I man like actually telling anybody or anything!

          Prosser The plans were on display.

          Arthur Hah, and how many average members of the public are in the habit of casually dropping around to the local planning office of an evening. It's not exactly a noted social venue is it? And even if you had popped in one on the off chance that some raving beurocrat had wanted to knoc

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @10:12AM (#8949353)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • This is why my economic reform plan includes making intellectual property held by corporations non-transferable. If a corporation fails, its intellectual property will become public domain.

          You can vote for me in 2012, if voting's still legal.

    • Re:Submarine patents? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Snover ( 469130 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:14AM (#8948303) Homepage
      Well, this isn't exactly an issue of a submarine patent. The implementation has been available for many many years, and they're only now trying to leverage their patent on it, as opposed to a submarine patent which is designed around technology that doesn't exist yet, and once someone actually invents it, is used to leverage patents from them. So, close, but not quite.

      • Re:Submarine patents? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jimicus ( 737525 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:21AM (#8948339)
        Submarine patent or not, they've essentially sat on it until well after it became a de-facto standard and only now started suing people. If it were a trademark (which you need to defend or else it becomes invalid) it would be thrown out of court. Why can't the same thing be done with patents?

      • I thought that patenting a process or ides, then letting people use it for years on end, before filing a claim for infringement was a submaris. Maybe there's another word for this practise.

        What you're describing,

        [a] submarine patent [is one which] which is designed around technology that doesn't exist yet, and once someone actually invents it
        sounds to me like a wrongly granted patent.

        Beefy

        • Re:Submarine patents? (Score:3, Informative)

          by Dr. Evil ( 3501 )

          No, once the patent is issued, it's considered public, and it can't be hidden.

          But if you delay the issuing of your patent... then you can do some very evil things...

          http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SubmarinePatent [c2.com]

        • In his classic "Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman" Richard Feynman explains how he "earned" the patents on nuclear submarines and nuclear airplanes. At that time, neither technology existed. On the other hand, afaik he never tried to extort royalties from the US Navy for the USS Nautilus, so perhaps that doesn't count as a real submarine...

    • Re:Submarine patents? (Score:5, Informative)

      by BlueUnderwear ( 73957 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:24AM (#8948355)
      The "legal definition" of "submarine patents" is not "obscure patent that is not enforced", but "patent which is kept in 'pending' state during an artificially long time".

      The goal is to exploit a loop hole in patent law where validity of patent is counted from the date when it was granted, and not from date where it was applied for. So, if you've got a patent application, and you know that no competitor is even close to being able to commercially exploit it, you (the application) just slow down the approval process as best as you can (by filing papers as late as possible, by introducing trivial amendments which forces the patent office to restart the procedure from the beginning, etc.). You keep on stalling like this until you see that a competitor is almost ready to infringe: you then let the application proceed at normal speed, and enjoy 25 years of monopoly from that date on.

      • Re:Submarine patents? (Score:2, Informative)

        by troc ( 3606 )
        Nope, that's incorrect. A patent, if granted, is valid from the date it is first applied for. This date is called the filing date (or priority date - it depends whether this is a "first filing") and is THE most important date in a patent's life. This is the date it arrives in the patent office.

        There are other important dates such as the date the application is published (usually around 18 months after the filing date) and various deadlines - especially for PCT (WIPO) applications but a patent is retroactiv

        • Re:Submarine patents? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:43AM (#8948993)
          Wow...nothing like people quoting bad law on /. and getting modded up on it. Here is how it really works:

          For patents filed prior to June 8, 1995, the length of the term is 17 years from date of issuance, regardless of the length of prosecution. Thus, you can keep the patent sitting in the patent office using continuing applications and other tricks, and then change the claims of the patent to closely match emerging technology. Also, because patent application publication did not automatically happen in apps filed 1995 and before, people would not have an opportunity to see that there was a pending patent that could cover their technology.

          Apps filed between June 8, 1995 and May 28, 2000 have a term of 20 years from date of filing. However, this term of 20 years can be extended based upon delays in prosecution regarding secrecy orders, interferences, and/or successful appeals. (The URAA changed this law).

          Apps filed after May 28, 2000 are given 20 years after filing, but they can be adjusted based upon on the number of days of delay caused by the PTO minus the number of days delay caused by the applicant. These adjustments are rather complicated, and usually not worth getting into (unless it is a pharm patent where keeping generics off the market mean huge money per day).

          While I might be a patent lawyer, the above is not legal advice in any way.

    • Estoppel (Score:4, Insightful)

      by danoatvulaw ( 625376 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @10:15AM (#8949397)
      Everybody say it with me now: estoppel. if they waited this long to assert their patent rights, while all along constructively assuring the public that they wouldn't sue, they have to be equitably estopped in some manner. (meaning they waited too long and by their conduct they lead everyone to believe that they wouldn't be sued, so they lost their right to sue here.)

      Just my .02

    • Re:Submarine patents? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by raga ( 12555 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @02:23PM (#8952475)
      This is not a submarine patent. However, Forgent may be on shaky grounds as far as collection of huge amounts of license fee is concerned. The JPEG Committee specifically states that "Specifically, SC 29 affirms the ISO policy of only considering technology that is free of "IP rights" or which is available on a royalty and license fee free basis or which is available under reasonable terms and conditions on a non-discriminatory basis." (IANAL:)Checkout this page. [jpeg.org]

      "WG 1 requires all participants within all National Bodies to disclose and identify any and all patent rights and the specific technologies within the Verification Model to which they apply. Further, WG 1 requires this disclosure and identification at the time of submission of technology for VM consideration if submitted by the patent holder or no later than one meeting after submission of technology if the technology is not submitted by the patent holder. Further, WG 1 requires that the form contained in WG 1 N1267 be completed as part of this disclosure. This request is in accordance with ISO/IEC directives Part II, Annex A, Section A.2. ...

      "SC 29 affirms and supports ISO policy that requires disclosure of the existence of Intellectual Property (IP) rights or pending rights (such as patents or pending patent applications), hereafter referred to as "IP rights", associated with any technology submitted to SC 29/WGs for consideration for inclusion in any ISO/IEC standard. Specifically, SC 29 affirms the ISO policy of only considering technology that is free of "IP rights" or which is available on a royalty and license fee free basis or which is available under reasonable terms and conditions on a non-discriminatory basis. " ...
      In 2002, it became widely publicised that one or more companies were making claims in some countries that they had patents which they believed read on the original JPEG standard IS10918-1. The JPEG Committee produces standards, which have a global basis, and are unable to comment on the validity of such claims, or potential infringement by particular implementations within specific jurisdictions. No such claims have (at January 2004) been registered formally through the appropriate channels at ISO and ITU-T, so far as the Webmaster is aware. In an attempt to provide as much technical background as possible to assist companies approached concerning such patent claims, JPEG have assembled a Historical Archive of as much material as possible, which helps show how decisions were taken, what the technical inputs were behind those decisions, and some of the background information concerning the involvement of companies and individuals in the standardisation process. These are currently provided without further commentary as a service to members of the JPEG committee only, primarily for copyright reasons.


      cheers- raga

  • PNG (Score:3, Interesting)

    by millwall ( 622730 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:08AM (#8948270)
    Maybe this will be a call for everyone to switch to PNG.

    • Re:PNG (Score:5, Insightful)

      by adrianbaugh ( 696007 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:10AM (#8948279) Homepage Journal
      Maybe. But given the two formats are for such completely different purposes I fail to see how this is relevant. PNG is much more obviously a competitor for GIF than for JPG.

      • Re:PNG (Score:4, Informative)

        by woodhouse ( 625329 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:17AM (#8948317) Homepage
        Yup, while PNG can do 24-bit with no problem, it's lossless compression, which doesn't perform particularly well with photos, and it just can't compete with jpeg in terms of file size.

      • Re:PNG (Score:3, Funny)

        by syntap ( 242090 )
        Maybe. But given the two formats are for such completely different purposes I fail to see how this is relevant. PNG is much more obviously a competitor for GIF than for JPG.

        It's all pr0n to me.

      • Re:PNG (Score:3, Interesting)

        by AmericanInKiev ( 453362 )
        But it certainly does beg for consideration of a new format.

        I would recommend the new format embrace the features of Camera RAW modes so as to avoid a common publishing format but a proprietary storage format.

        A Digital camera, like film captures higher highs and lower lows than paper can print and thus in publication, a great deal of data is "discarded".

        A smart format would account for the possibility of extra data while at the same time including a presentation optimized perspective.

        AIK

    • Re:PNG (Score:5, Informative)

      by tomstdenis ( 446163 ) <tomstdenis@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:10AM (#8948280) Homepage
      Not really. Compress a 640x480 photo image to ~50KB with PNG ;-) [and still look decent].

      PNG is meant for *lossless* raster art.

      JPEG is meant for *lossy* "photo realistic" art.

      TOM is meant for pepsi.... need more pepsi....

    • Re:PNG (Score:4, Insightful)

      by odano ( 735445 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:10AM (#8948282)
      PNG is there to replace GIF, not JPG.

      JPG is still the best image format for photographs.

      • Re:PNG (Score:5, Informative)

        by JasonStiletto ( 653819 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:18AM (#8948324)
        *best* .. well, that depends on what you're measuring. It's going to give you a smaller file size. A PNG will still more accurately recreate the original. You can convert a BMP into a PNG back and fourth a million times and you won't loose quality unless there is some form of error. Except for the lossless version of the JPEG2000 standard, you loose information every time you compress a JPEG. compressing back and fourth between jpeg and bmp quickly makes something that is unusuable. If space isn't an issue, you would want a lossless format. I would think you generally wouldn't want to convert it into a lossy format until the very last step- distribution, wherein effeciency of communication is more important than perfection of information.

      • Re:PNG (Score:4, Interesting)

        by j-turkey ( 187775 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:21AM (#8948343) Homepage
        JPG is still the best image format for photographs.

        Why do you say that JPEG is the best image format for photographs? Because it's so widely used? JPEG is a lossy format -- regardless of what you do with it. PNG looks far better, although it's not as well compressed. However, with storage technology where it is, wouldn't you want your photos to start off in a lossless format -- then compress it down with some lossy compression scheme later?

        • Re:PNG (Score:4, Informative)

          by odano ( 735445 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:26AM (#8948366)
          Do you keep wav files on your hard drive because they are loss-less?

          After a certain point, compression isn't hindering the quality that much, and the amount of space that is saved is more important than the small amounts of the quality that are lost. Just like the mp3 format works so well by slimming down the things the human ear can't hear, jpg works by blending and compressing images in way that the human eye can barely tell the difference while saving optimum amounts of space.

          • Re:PNG (Score:5, Insightful)

            by j-turkey ( 187775 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:36AM (#8948430) Homepage
            Do you keep wav files on your hard drive because they are loss-less?

            That's a loaded question. When I create audio files, the answer is: I'd absolutely store wav (and similar) files on my hard drive. Why would I ever want a compressed master?

            When I rip a CD, I store them as MP3's. The point is that original files shouldn't be compressed using a lossy format (unless you don't care...I do). When it's time to distribute the file, sure, crunch it down.

            • Re:PNG (Score:3, Insightful)

              by gowen ( 141411 )

              I'd absolutely store wav (and similar) files on my hard drive. Why would I ever want a compressed master?

              To save diskspace, perhaps?

              The point is that original files shouldn't be compressed using a lossy format (unless you don't care...I do)

              As soon as the light passed through the camera lens, information was lost by distortion. When your camera store that light as a digitised or encoded in the grains of film, more information was lost. If that film was then digitally imaged into a PNG, even more infor

              • Re:PNG (Score:5, Insightful)

                by Total_Wimp ( 564548 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:21AM (#8948795)
                Compared to those lossy processes, the difference between a PNG master and high quality JPEG master is negligible.

                Great comparison. For one generation. But when you're editing pics you don't want to keep saving to a lossy format because each save will increase the noise. How would that pic look after 10 - 20 generations of saves as a JPEG?

                You can compare single generations all you want and you'll get the same results (the JPEG looks great!) but that absolutely does not indicate thats how you should save your masters.

                TW

              • Re:PNG (Score:4, Informative)

                by j-turkey ( 187775 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:33AM (#8948879) Homepage
                As soon as the light passed through the camera lens, information was lost by distortion. When your camera store that light as a digitised or encoded in the grains of film, more information was lost. If that film was then digitally imaged into a PNG, even more information was lost.

                What are you smoking? I'm talking practical here. Of course data is lost in a recording. That's the nature of most any kind of recording. The point is to cut out loss wherever possible. To record an image one has to use a lens (or series of lenses), and a medium to record the light onto (either film or CCD). These are unavoidable. However, a lossy compression scheme is avoidable. Furthermore, if one is going to save a compressed image, edit it, then recompress it using a lossy scheme -- it adds up. By your logic, there's no reason to clean your optics, because you're losing data one way or the other -- this is nonsensical.

                You're also talking about the still-semi-obscure JPEG 2000 standard/codec, which you fail to mention isn't nearly as easy to use or widely avaialble as JFIF or PNG. I think this is a case of "my bike's made out of lead and I like it!". PNG is out there, it's free, full featured and it works very well.

              • Re:PNG (Score:5, Insightful)

                by Dr. Evil ( 3501 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:34AM (#8948896)
                Why would I ever want a compressed master?

                To save diskspace, perhaps?

                It's your master! You don't want a lossy compressed master!... that's insane!

                Note how the high-quality lossy jpegs are indistuingishable from the lossless formats...

                Of course they are distinguishable, they're "lossy". Blow them up, manipulate them, do whatever you do, yeah, if you just look at them they're indistinguishable, but if you do anything else with them, the smashed-up hard edges, "ringing" artifacts, and all that stuff will quickly cause problems.

                Ugh. I hate asking people for photos or clipart for websites because I know they'll do something to it to make it "easier to email".

                Cropping, framing, adjusting the contrast and colours for a final image is horrible once somebody's done this to an image.

              • Re:PNG (Score:4, Insightful)

                by Mordaximus ( 566304 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @10:27AM (#8949585)
                ...Compared to those lossy processes

                Could someone please call the recording studios and let them know they should just record to 8 track tape, and encode the audio not once but twice as 128kbps MP3s and only then rip them to CD before selling them, just because they will have lost information between the singer and the microphone?

                I think maybe you're not familiar with the prupose of masters. In a nutshell, you set up your environment in order to minimize the information loss, then you record that information as perfectly as possible. That pretty much applies to the process of recording anything. The master needs to be of the highest quality possible because every generation created from that master will _at_least_ share the same defects and artifacts.

                the difference between a PNG master and high quality JPEG master is negligible

                You're right, but PNG and JPEG are compressed, and again the parent poster was talking about uncompressed masters (his analog was WAV vs. MP3.) The difference between RAW or TIFF(ie. the WAV or CD in his example) and JPEG or PNG (ie. the MP3) are monumental.

            • WAV files (was Re: PNG) (Score:4, Informative)

              by belmolis ( 702863 ) <billposerNO@SPAMalum.mit.edu> on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:36AM (#8948912) Homepage

              Strictly speaking, a WAV file can contain any of dozens of representations of the audio data, many of which are lossy compressions. The WAV format just defines the file structure. There is an entry in the header that specifies the audio data representation. Much of the time WAV files contain linear PCM data, which is uncompressed, but they don't have to. In fact, theres no reason in principle that a WAV file couldn't contain FLAC compressed data, though I believe that no FLAC identifier code has been registered.

      • Re:PNG (Score:5, Informative)

        by sepluv ( 641107 ) <blakesley&gmail,com> on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:35AM (#8948422)
        In fact there is a version of MNG (muti-image PNG)which uses JPEG and is called JNG (JPEG Network Graphics).

        This offers the advantages of the PNG/MNG file-format specifcations (transparency, meta-data, &c) along with the JPEG compression algorithm, and is meant to be a replacement for JFIF (the JPEG file image format) which is the commonest JPEG-based file format.

        BTW, this story sounds *very* BAAD...

        [woops...formatted now]

    • Re:PNG (Score:2, Informative)

      by SYRanger ( 590202 )
      Well, PNG is lossless, whereas JPEG is lossy. JPEG is superior when it comes to compression of e.g. photographies.

    • Re:PNG (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DarkSarin ( 651985 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:23AM (#8948353) Homepage Journal
      Yeah, well we all Know [alistapart.com] why we don't use png. I am working on a new layout for my website that calls for the heavy use of pngs (due to transparency), but when I showed it to a web-savvy friend he asked why not use GIF.

      My point is that many people are still unaware of why PNG is better, despite having more than adequate time to become educated.

      The real trouble is that microsoft still hasn't fixed png support, and the hacks, such as IE7 (by dean edwards) and sleight (www.skyzyx.com) aren't perfect.

      For now, my site looks awesome in Moz/Opera compliant browsers, but only so-so in IE, and its a fully w3c compliant site.

      JPG's are also useful in their own right, but lack certain features that make png's better. Interestingly enough, PNG's do well enough with photos for my admittedly low standards.

    • Maybe this will be a call for everyone to switch to PNG.

      Yes, but in a couple of years some smart company will spring some PNG related patents on us. Didn't we all see this with gif? And then moved from gif to jpg (and png) to avoid that patent issue?

      Maybe now would be the time to move back to gif instead: At least the patents on gifs are expired by now!

    • Interesting Idea (Score:3, Informative)

      by Famatra ( 669740 )
      With the rate bandwidth throughput is increasing, why not make png the standard? Then we can have lossless copies of our images.

      When baud was 300, the difference between a JPG and BMP/PNG type was HUGE. Now the compression gains from the jpg standard is decreasing as bandwidth increases (i.e. the 0.01 seconds saved for downloading a jpg compared to a png is negligible.)

      Go go png format!
    • ...is if you could design a method to arbitrarily reduce quality before PNG compression, in such a way that it becomes easily compressible. Kinda like the oh-so-much rumored wavelets that I've yet to see materialize.

      I'm not sure how exactly PNG works, but I assume it has some "easy" and "hard" pixels to encode. If you accepted some loss to quality, for the bonus of getting lots of extra easy pixels, could you get near-JPG performance out of it?

      Obviously, this would be a rather major job to do and I have n
      • Kinda like the oh-so-much rumored wavelets that I've yet to see materialize.

        JPEG2000 uses wavelet compression and do look better than regular JPEG to me (for the same size of course). Only problem is that it's covered with patents.

        So, wavelet formats have materialzed, but where are the open-source implementations? I want the Ogg equivalent for picture formats!

  • Looks like we should have seen this coming a long (Score:5, Informative)

    by JS_RIDDLER ( 570254 ) * on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:08AM (#8948272)
    Looks like we should have seen this coming a long time ago...
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/07/18/jpegs_are_ not_free_patent [theregister.co.uk] Published Thursday 18th July 2002 17:12 GMT
    oh and here are some more related articles
    Some Google results [google.com]

  • This Just In (Score:5, Funny)

    by nonewshere ( 693344 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:13AM (#8948296)
    Jpeg is declared a lossey compression format in 2 ways now. 1) Image quality is degraded 2) your bank balance is degraded if you are sued for infringing on its patents

  • Why this Opportunism? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by osewa77 ( 603622 ) <naijasms@NOspaM.gmail.com> on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:16AM (#8948308) Homepage
    well, I wonder how much they expect to make from the lawsuit in the short time period, since it takes little time to switch to alternative file formats.
    • I'd say, "I wonder how they expect to make much from the lawsuit in the short time period" because the damn patent will expire before most of the cases get through the judicial system. What happens then? Are the cases void because it's now non-patented? Or are they continued because the suit was initiated before the patent expired? Oh, the burning questions!
    • Absolutely right. Off you go then - replace all the JPEGs on every website out there with a file format which the 95% of users using MSIE on Windows can reliably.

      While you're at it, remove JPEG support from Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and The Gimp.

  • Gimp (Score:5, Interesting)

    by millahtime ( 710421 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:17AM (#8948318) Homepage Journal
    I know gimp doesn't have gif native because of the license but does have JPEG. Does this mean that they are going to get targeted for using JPEG?

    • Re:Gimp (Score:5, Informative)

      by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:34AM (#8948410) Homepage
      The GIF patent is mostly dead.
      From gnu.org: 1. We were able to search the patent databases of the USA, Canada, Japan, and the European Union. The Unisys patent expired on 20 June 2003 in the USA, but it does not expire in most of Europe until 18 June 2004, in Japan until 20 June 2004 and in Canada until 7 July 2004. The U.S. IBM patent expires 11 August 2006, (we are still searching the databases of other countries).
      Has IBM actually used its patent against anyone, or did they just get it in self-defence? Here's a timeline [kuro5hin.org] of the mess.

    • Re:Gimp (in DEEP trouble) (Score:5, Funny)

      by gosand ( 234100 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:47AM (#8948511)
      I know gimp doesn't have gif native because of the license but does have JPEG. Does this mean that they are going to get targeted for using JPEG?

      Yes, Gimp is in deep trouble. Rumor has it they'll have to fork over 50% of their profits.

  • In other news... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Nuclear Elephant ( 700938 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:17AM (#8948319) Homepage
    ... Sony electronics was sued today over its use of 8-track tapes.

  • Interesting omission (Score:5, Interesting)

    by d60b9y ( 692396 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:19AM (#8948333) Journal
    Looking at the list of companies in that list, I see one interesting omission from the list of companies being sued, namely Microsoft. I find this slightly surprizing given the number of MS products that use jpegs, doubly so if the aim of this exercise is to raise cash for the patent holders.

    They can't be worried about hitting companies that can afford lots of lawyers as there are some big names in that list of companies already.

    Anybody know whether the beast of Redmond has paid for a license?

    • a little googling... (Score:2, Informative)

      by ashpool7 ( 18172 )
      ... can turn up some more information about this [com.com]

      This isn't new. It doesn't look like Microsoft was ever in talks with these people. I'd guess they didn't sue them because they didn't want to get their butt handed to them by a company that gives out 1.9 billion like candy.

    • Interesting (Score:4, Interesting)

      by whovian ( 107062 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @11:03AM (#8950059)
      Some more digging...

      Remember yesterday? /. had a thread [slashdot.org] about working on a Universal 3D file format wherein it was mentioned that MP3 and JPEG as models for comparison were encumbered with patent issues.

      The first two Score-5 responses come up as follows:

      Really bad examples to pick... (Score:5, Insightful)
      by * on Wednesday April 21, @03:26PM (#8933019 [slashdot.org])
      (http://www.studioqb.com/)
      Not only did they pick two lossy formats to use as examples, both MP3 [mp3licensing.com] and JPEG [forgent.com] are patent-encumbered formats. (The validity of the Forgent patent on a piece of JPEG is a bit of a still-contested issue... but I'll leave that to others to discuss.) If you want to write a program using either of those formats, you're going to have to pay the toll.

      Let's hope U3D is able to stay clear of such entanglements. Having a patent involved in a file format makes it questionable if FOSS can legally use the format.

      JPEG patent is bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
      by * on Wednesday April 21, @03:29PM (#8933064 [slashdot.org])

      You have a point with MP3, but the author of BurnAllGIFs.org [burnallgifs.org] seems to think the JPEG patent wouldn't stand up in a court of law.


      and now the lawsuit announcement on the next day. Interesting coinky-dink.

      Who are the groups involved? The 3D Industry Forum [3dif.org]'s web site has a FAQ containing a partial list of members:

      Adobe      , Boeing, Dassault/Systemes, NGRAIN, Lattice, Microsoft, Parallel Graphics, SGDL Systems and Tech Soft. [and Intel presumably as they called for the Forum].


      Compare to the list of defendants in the Forgent suit:

      Adobe, Agfa, Apple, Axis Communications, Canon, Concord Camera Corporation, Creative Labs, Dell, Kodak, Fuji Photo Film, Fujitsu CPoA, Gateway, HP, IBM, JASC Software, JVC Americas Corp., Kyocera, Macromedia, Matsushita, Oce' North America, Onkyo, PalmOne, Panasonic, Ricoh, Broderbund, Savin, Thomson S.A., Toshiba, Xerox.


      Well, from my limited perspective, it appears to me that the groups are largely disjoint as the 3D forum is concerned with graphics and the lawsuit defendants are largely video imaging and photography related. Adobe apparently has its hands into both.

      Somebody else [slashdot.org] already wondered by Microsoft wasn't listed, but I'd be more inclinded to ask, Why not Sony since they are into photography as well (Digicam, Cyber-shot). Maybe they have licensed JPEG, who knows?

  • What the hell (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GrassMunk ( 677765 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:21AM (#8948340)
    Ok, what the hell is wrong with this picture: I patent an idea. Let the whole world use it as a standard for webpages/compressed images. Let my patent be used in technologies like digital cameras and the like without one single word of infringement or anything. I let this transpire for almost 18 years then BAM! i sue everyone who is using my patent with only a few months left on my patent. It's bullshit if you ask me. Why didnt the damn company sue for patent infringement before it got so out of control? Why is a company allowed to do this. In all honesty you should either do your best to enforce your patent or all you get is a product the no one else can patent. God damned this world is outta control

    • Re:What the hell (Score:3, Informative)

      by troc ( 3606 )
      Granted patents are PUBLISHED documents. This means they are public and available to be read by anyone. So the company with the patent isn't hiding their patent waiting to spring it on an unsuspecting world, the world is failing to do some simple book research before relying on some technology.

      If I want to invent something or research something or whatever, the first thing I do (and this is standard practice in research) is do a literature search for bachground info - no use reinventing the wheel etc. Any

      • Re:What the hell (Score:5, Funny)

        by MeNeXT ( 200840 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:14AM (#8948740)

        If I want to invent something...



        I woke up this morning and I want to invent something...hmmmmm....let's see.....oh yhea an account....yheah that's it an account...


        Oh! it's already done? By the credit card companies. Oh I'll just add the word Internet....


        That's one click shopping you say?


        No problemo I'll just add "wireless netwoking". coolio off tho the patent office I say. Then off to bed.


        Now that was a hard days work. I wonder what I will inv3nt tomorrow? Yeah that's it I'll replace the vowels with numbers and patent that as a security feature.

        /sarcasm

      • Re:What the hell (Score:3, Informative)

        by Eivind ( 15695 )
        That's not how it works in the real world. In the real world;
        • Even extensive searches does *not* guarantee that you find all relevant patents.
        • The language is often so unclear that it takes years of wrangling in court to settle if something infringes or not, what makes you think a quick literature-search would settle it ?
        • If you did read the patent, but concluded that your invention doesn't infringe, then you'll owe triple damages if it does infringe, because it'll be claimed you infringed willingly.
        • Ther

    • Re:What the hell (Score:4, Insightful)

      by _|()|\| ( 159991 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:21AM (#8948794)
      I let this transpire for almost 18 years then BAM! i sue everyone who is using my patent with only a few months left on my patent.

      The defendants will claim noninfringement, implied license, estoppel by laches, and that the patent is invalid. At worst, they should be barred from continuing to infringe the patent. Some of them may be able to live six months without it, depending on how much stock is already in the retail channel.

    • Let's actually have some facts here..... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The patent will actually expire on October 27, 2006 -- U.S. patents that were issued or pending as of June 1995 expire either 17 years from issuance or 20 years from earliest claimed priority date, whichever is longer.

      Secondly, they are only entitled to damages for the 6 years preceeding the filing of the complaint (see e.e. 35 USC 286).

      Thirdly, according to other stories and press releases, they did try to negotiate licensing agreements with these companies but couldn't reach an agreement. Patent lawsui

  • Are they stupid? (Score:2, Funny)

    by tqft ( 619476 )
    Or are they just hoping all of IBM's lawyers are tied up with SCO?

    Isn't that why IBM is an international company - because they can't fit all their lawyers in the USA?

    Reaches for tinfoil - why wan't Microsoft listed? Are there no use jpeg' used in Windows?
  • Directly from the link:

    "The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for processing signals to remove redundant information thereby making the signals more suitable for transfer through a limited-bandwidth medium. The present invention specifically relates to methods and apparatus useful in video compression systems. Typically, the system determines differences between the current input signals and the previous input signals using mean-square difference signals. These mean-square signals are proc

    • Shouldn't affect commodity JPEG (Score:5, Informative)

      by HalloFlippy ( 91240 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:54AM (#8948562) Homepage Journal
      After perusing the comp.compression faq [newsville.com] for an overview of jpeg (see question [75]), I don't think this patent, even if valid, will affect JPEG as we know it. As the parent post points out, the patent covers compression via diff's between images. (This is, as I understand it, a major component of MPEG encoding, so I'm curious why they're not the ones getting sued.) JPEG, as your web browser uses it, likely doesn't use such a technique. From the FAQ:

      The hierarchical mode represents an image at multiple resolutions. For example, one could provide 512x512, 1024x1024, and 2048x2048 versions of the image. The higher-resolution images are coded as differences from the next smaller image, and thus require many fewer bits than they would if stored independently. (However, the total number of bits will be greater than that needed to store just the highest-resolution frame in baseline form.) The individual frames in a hierarchical sequence can be coded progressively if desired. Hierarchical mode is not widely supported at present.

      My take is that this "hierarchical mode" extension is the part covered by the patent. The problem is that, assuming the FAQ article is correct, most implementations of JPEG decoding we encounter won't support it, meaning most people aren't going to be encoding their JPEG's this way since it would be incompatible with mass-market JPEG implementations. It sounds more like something a company would use as part of a proprietary format built on JPEG.

      Bottom line: don't expect this to have any ramifications for Mozilla, IE, etc.

  • Doctrine of Laches... (Score:5, Informative)

    by BlabberMouth ( 672282 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:27AM (#8948375)
    If you've known you had a case but did not bring suit and allowed your damages to mount, your suit is barred by the doctrine of laches. They would have a good argument based on this to either dismiss the suit or severely limit their damage award, assuming the validity of the patent, which I'm not.

    • Re:Doctrine of Laches... (Score:5, Informative)

      by AviLazar ( 741826 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:21AM (#8948798) Journal
      Not necessarily. Many companies wait to sue until the company being sued generates a certain amount of revenue. The reason for this is so the cost of litigation fee's is covered. In other words. If it will cost me 1 million to sue your company, I want to make sure I get back at least 1 million. So I am going to wait until that point in time. However, it didn't cost these guys that much money to create the jpg standard. -A

  • Politicians wake up (Score:5, Funny)

    by t_allardyce ( 48447 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:28AM (#8948383) Journal
    Could someone (maybe a senator?) explain to me: if the entire purpose of patents is to promote innovation and provide an incentive to innovate then WTF does any new innovation require the inventor to spend 3 years to check that it doesnt infringe 10,000 patents? In the computer world things change on a weekly basis, can we _please_ make patents expire much much faster and stop all this stupid non-sense with people having ownership of ideas that play a totally obvious role in our lifes or where infact covered by another idea: case study: pop-up windows! dont make me fucking laugh this should have been thrown out of court within 30 seconds, one click shopping:

    ME: Hi,
    SHOPKEEPER: Hey Theo how can i help you?
    ME: id like this and that please,
    SHOPKEEPER: Certainly ill charge it to your tab?

    now if you came into MY court with this patent mr amazon i would fucking get down from my stand and BEAT YOU WITH MY GAVEL! fuck you!

    damit patents piss me off so much.

  • Panic among Slashdot readers (Score:3, Funny)

    by dwalsh ( 87765 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:28AM (#8948384)
    Maybe they might go after the end users SCO-style.

    "How many JPEGs do I have on my hardrive?"
    "Does it apply to MPEGs aswell?"
    "Would a judge entertain a porn as free speech argument?"

  • How does this affect (Score:3, Insightful)

    by zogger ( 617870 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:32AM (#8948402) Homepage Journal
    ...browsers that display JPEG, and graphics apps, like the gimp? The patent seems pretty cut and dried-they own it, this isn't a SCO vague case here, and I'm surprised the companies are attempting a defense, because chances are they are going to lose unless there's something here that isn't evident, like this company gave it away, opened it up gratis, or something in the past I am not aware of..

    Sucks too, just viewing websites now with images turned on is a hassle with this old machine and slow dialup, I usually leave them off unless I REALLY need to see the image for navigation purposes or it's a news item I want to see, etc. And that's with low k JPEGs. If they were BMPs or PNGs it would be much worse.. hmm..

    Would it also mean that all the millions of websites out there that are using JPEGs are in potential violation if they haven't paid a license fee of some sort?

    This is nutz, but there ya go on software patents, we either live with them as the cyberworld gets more complicated, or scrap the whole notion of patenting intangibles and use a different business model with "computing", something I am greatly in favor of.
  • In a situation like a JPEG patent, the patentholder would want to wait until the technology was at its usage and value peak before trying to sue. That way, they stand the best chance of scaring the defendant into a quick and expensive settlement, rather than fight a behemoth on something they could care less about.

  • Hmmm... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Before that, Forgent was primarily known as a maker of video conferencing hardware under the name Video Telecom, or VTel. After continuing declining revenues, the company changed its name and management in August 2001. It was then that the company became a video technology firm focusing on software and patents.

    s/video conferencing hardware/operating systems/
    s/August 2001/August 2002/
    s/Video Telecom, or VTel/Caldera/
    s/Forgent/SCO/
    s/a video technology firm/litigious bastards/

  • JPEG, JPEG2000, and frivolous lawsuits. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by !ucif3r ( 713159 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:46AM (#8948499) Homepage

    It seems to be, based on the links here that they don't own JPEG, but have patented a technology that is identical to JPEG. JPEG developed the same technology seperate from them (correct me if I am wrong).

    What I am wondering about is the new JPEG2000 standard. Do they own that?

    Just FYI JPEG2000 is very similar to JPEG in design except it uses the Discrete Wavelet Transform instead of the Discrete Cosine Transform to transform the 8x8 pixel blocks. It is less blocky than JPEG in general.

    Seems to me this is a little stupid as neither company invented DCT or even the Huffman and run-length coding that make up the components of this scheme, and all of the components are public domain intellectual property.

    This litigation seems like a cash grab more than protecting there IP. They wait until everyone is freely using it (and for the most part believing it is a free technology) and then they sue the largest companies using it (hey why arn't they sueing Microsoft?).

  • MPEG not JPEG (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Xesdeeni ( 308293 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:05AM (#8948657)
    The abstract of the patent specifically states

    "The present invention specifically relates to methods and apparatus useful in video compression systems..."

    and

    "Typically, the system determines differences between the current input signals and the previous input signals..."

    (Emphasis mine)

    JPEG is not a video compression system, nor does it use differences with previous "signals." MPEG, WMV, and before that Indeo, Cinepak, and other methods of compressing video (almost always) do.

    Xesdeeni

  • PNG vs JPEG (Score:3, Informative)

    by cherokee158 ( 701472 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:06AM (#8948668)
    A little clarification: PNG is actually a very nice substitute for JPEG's (especially the way JPEG's are currently being abused). It's single shortcoming in comparison to JPEG is that it does not compress to as small a size. JPEG is still a better choice for the web, for this reason, but PNG beats it hands down in other roles.

    I've been working as a designer for over ten years (I started back when it used to require a degree, not just a computer). It's been my experience that JPEG is one of the most abused graphic file formats in general. It is good for the web...it's intended purpose...but it is awful for everything else. Unfortunately, everyone insists on using it for everything else...printing, digital cameras, stock art...all apparently blissfully unaware that this LOSSY algorithm is slowly but surely leeching the color data from their pictures every single time they save them. The result: Precious memories that print with muddy colors, photos with ugly artifacts in them, and unhappy designers who have to explain to their clients why there is no Photoshop cure for being a moron.

    PNG's are great. They support multiple levels of alpha transparency, retain all their data, and compress even photos very well. They are a much better option for a multi-purpose format. (They would be even better if M$ would get off their collective asses and implement them properly in IE. Currently, IE treats them as if they have only one level of transparency)
    JPEG's can still be smaller, at the expense of quality, but broadband may eventually make that moot. I fear we will all still be using JPEG's even then, though.

    I've seen video games still using the PCX format, which is a crap format if ever their was one. Old formats die hard.

    Do yourselves a favor: Use JPEG's on the web if you want, but archive your pictures with another format, like PNG, TIFF or Photoshop (PSD). CMYK images need to be saved as TIFF's or PSD's...ironically, the proprietary PSD is probably more universal.

    • Re:PNG vs JPEG (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gpinzone ( 531794 )
      I understand your pain with JPEGs and how they are overused. However, for large resolution photographs, try this experiment: Convert the file to a PNG and also convert it to a JPEG. Use a program that allows you to create a (lossless*) JPEG. In Photoshop, manually set the compression to 12. I remember PhotoShop 6 had 10 as the max value, but you can enter 12 in the box. Now compare the two images. Zoom in. Inspect them side by side. Now look at the file sizes. You may decide that JPEG files can be

  • Hard to let go (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Halo- ( 175936 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:12AM (#8948722)
    One of the problems with ideas is that multiple people can have the same one independantly. It's really hard to accept that just because an idea is original to you it may have occured to others.

    As part of my job, I sometimes apply for patents. (Which first goes to an internal company board to be judged if it's worth the cost of a real search-and-file) I've submitted 5 so far, and even though all of them we totally new concepts for me, only one of them survived a patent search. I have to admit that when the search committee has presented me with clear prior art, it's hard not to feel some sort of stupid "you sneaky bastards" type feelings directed at the party who thought of the idea before me. (Of course, being a sane person, I realize this is irrational, and get over it quickly.) Still, it's a blow to the ego.

    A the corporate level, I don't think things are much different. I can see some senior mucky-muck at a company which had been issued an overly broad patent for say, "Using a cathode ray tube to display the output of a computer" having trouble seeing the difference between reason and greed.

    Sometimes corporations have larger egos and senses of entitlement than even the most arrogant people. I suspect some manager got sort on funds, heard some tech say something like: "Heh, yeah, techinically we own JPEG..." and got visions of an easy buck.

  • Odd analogy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Overzeetop ( 214511 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:24AM (#8948814) Journal
    Okay, let's say I were to develop the perfect genetically engineered strain of corn, and patent my "invention" and publish a scientific paper on it. Now, lots of companies would like to sell this corn, and any half-decent biotech lab can reproduce my work.

    Continuing, lets say that I didn't limit the reproductive viability of the corn in my engineering work. So after the first few paroducts came to market and there was an ample opportunity to harvest the kernals for commercial re-sale. Every Southern States and TSC has a house brand of Overzeetop Super Corn. It's everywhere - on the grocery shelves, in the newspapers, on the web...the corn is ubiquitous worldwide.

    Here's my question: If, after a dozen years, I decide to sue every maker and distributer of my corn, do I really have a case?

    Naturally, IANAL, but I do know that you can lose a trademark if it is not defended. This seems awfully similar, but the laws regarding these two are different. Is there an equivalent loss of rights for a patent?

  • A SCO business model (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jerry ( 6400 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:32AM (#8948870)
    ForGent Networks, like SCO, gave up a product based business model and now persues the litigation business model. Such 'businesses' should forever be designated as a 'SCO class' businesses because the 'product' they sell is EXACTLY the same type of product Al Capone's thugs sold, protection from attack by Al Capone's gang, except that the courts become pawns of the business and send out the police to attack businesses. And, their employees appear to be composed mostly of lawyers, with an occasional geek lawn jockey to lend credibility to the term "technology".

    Compression Labs never enforced the JPEG patent and now, with only months remaining before the patent expires greedy lawyers are trying to extort cash out of users.

    The USTPO and/or Congress should outlaw submarine patents, and tighten rules to cancel patents if prior violations are massive and public knowledge but the patent holder has made no attempt to enforce the patent.

  • Joint Photographic Experts Group Sues 412 Users (Score:3, Funny)

    by gearmonger ( 672422 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @10:38AM (#8949712)
    News flash: Taking a cue from the RIAA, the JPEG has instituted wide-ranging lawsuits and subpoenas to ISPs requesting identification of users who are, according to the JPEG representative, "guilty of sharing hundreds or thousands of illegally created JPG images using programs or utilities that do not comply with the recently enforced JPEG patent."

    In other news, the entire US Congress was found to have absolutely no clue as to the meaning of the words "The Congress shall have power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

  • Details and Prior Art (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 23, 2004 @11:45AM (#8950594)
    http://www.algovision-luratech.de/company/news/pat entquarrel.jsp?OnlineShopId=1075701030541733420#4

    (Remove the space after "...pat" - the slashdot formatter mangled the URL)

  • We could abandon JPEG, too (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mudshark ( 19714 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @11:55AM (#8950712)
    Bah.

    Wavelet technology produces better compression ratios with greatly reduced human-visible artifacts than JPEG. These clowns might as well be tomorrow's buggy whip manufacturers.

    If you haven't checked out wavelets, you're missing massive coolness. Edges between different tones are where our eyes get their best cues, and JPEG indiscriminately "blocks up" edges. Wavelets preserve edge information and do it well at compression ratios that JPEG uses to create low-rent Mondrian ripoffs.

  • Scuzball tactics... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ConceptJunkie ( 24823 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @12:11PM (#8950955) Homepage Journal
    A major question will be why the patentee waited so long to stake its claim.

    Because they're dicks. We've seen this with GIF

    1. Obtain a patent to something. (prerequisites: 1. You can fog a mirror 2. You can afford the application fee 3. You have third grade writing skills)

    2. Don't enforce it until and unless it becomes a widely used standard.

    3. Start threatening people and rake in the cash from those few companies that cave out of fear of the courts.

    4. Profit.

    5. Laugh at being one of the few people who doesn't have a "???" step.

  • Jpeg: Can't we do better? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @12:20PM (#8951066) Homepage
    As has been said in this thread, maybe it's time to get a new standard. But not just because .jpeg is encumbered with patent issues.

    People keep saying that .jpeg is still the best for photographs over .gif (without question) and .png (possibly). But that's not saying a lot, because .jpegs still suck, they just are not that good even for photographs. There has to be a better (yes, yes, yes, lossy) compression algorithm than .jpeg that can be developed Open Source...

  • Good... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Guspaz ( 556486 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @12:44PM (#8951379)
    JPEG2000 is a much better format, maybe now we'll see some quick adoption.

    If Microsoft added native JPEG2000 support to Internet Explorer, you can bet it would come into widespread usage extremely quickly.

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