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Forgent Squeezing Money Out Of JPEG, Other Patents 305

Posted by simoniker from the delightful dept.
deman1985 writes "Forbes reports that Forgent Networks, Inc., developer of scheduling software and holder of a number of technology patents, has settled with both Adobe and Sony for JPEG patent infringement and is going after numerous others to collect their fair share of royalties. The company also plans to go after PVR companies, including TiVo Inc, and MP3 player makers for other various patents they claim to hold. Sounds like more fun in the courts for everyone!" We previously reported on Forgent's JPEG patent shenanigans back in April.
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Forgent Squeezing Money Out Of JPEG, Other Patents

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  • LZW check, JPEG, erm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by trisweb ( 690296 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:46AM (#9945684) Journal
    Just when we thought it was safe to put colored pixels on the internet again...
    • We all should be using png anyway. Easy fix.

      • Re:LZW check, JPEG, erm... (Score:5, Informative)

        by danamania ( 540950 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:56AM (#9945726)
        PNG is good for its own purposes, but it's no .jpg replacement. JPG = lossy and phenomenal compression, where PNG = nonlossy and kind-of-average compression.

        Take a high resolution screenshot with any complexity and save it as a PNG, and you might be lucky to get it in under 600KB, where a .jpg could get the same point across in under 100KB.

        PNG is a good replacement for .gif, but not for .jpg, yet.

        • Re:LZW check, JPEG, erm... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by tpgp ( 48001 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:37AM (#9945822) Homepage
          Take a high resolution screenshot with any complexity

          Sure - JPG is better for most photos - but sharp edges, text (including high resolution screenshots of text) and the like look much better under png (bit for bit).

          Slightly offtopic, but noone seems to have mentioned Unisys [unisys.com] yet - soon we may be seeing on GNU a page similar to this one: Why There Are No GIF files on GNU Web Pages [gnu.org]

          Soon we may need a burn all jpegs day [burnallgifs.org] ;-)

        • Re:LZW check, JPEG, erm... (Score:5, Informative)

          by hankwang ( 413283 ) * on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:59AM (#9945873) Homepage
          Take a high resolution screenshot with any complexity and save it as a PNG, and you might be lucky to get it in under 600KB, where a .jpg could get the same point across in under 100KB.

          I tried it, 1536x1152 PNG, JPG (q=75%), JPG (q=95%).

          $ls -l
          -rw-r--r-- 1 hankwang hankwang 99438 Aug 12 11:49 ss.png
          -rw-rw-r-- 1 hankwang hankwang 236158 Aug 12 11:50 ss75.jpg
          -rw-rw-r-- 1 hankwang hankwang 404179 Aug 12 11:50 ss95.jpg
          Apart from the bigger filesize, JPG shows ugly artifacting. Note: I don't use too many antialiased fonts, and no fancy backgrounds and skins. If most of your desktop is covered by a photographic JPG image in the first place, you will find different results, of course. :)
          • Yes, I think he was talking about photos all along although he just said "with any complexity". I agree that PNG is no good alternative for those unless you aren't publicizing them on the web.

        • Re:LZW check, JPEG, erm... (Score:5, Informative)

          by nmg196 ( 184961 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @07:17AM (#9946125)
          > Take a high resolution screenshot with any complexity and save
          > it as a PNG, and you might be lucky to get it in under 600KB,
          > where a .jpg could get the same point across in under 100KB.

          A screenshot is a very bad example. It's almost NEVER better to save screenshot using a lossy compression algorithm such as JPEG. Screenshots are always better as GIF/PNG.

          JPEG is designed for compressing PHOTOGRAPHS and nothing else. It severely messes up screenshots and text unless set to extremely high quality. But if you set it to extremely high quality, the file size is usually much bigger than a PNG would be anyway.

          I'm amazed at how many authors of programming articles still don't know basic web fundamentals such as how to save a screenshot.

          To summarise:
          Save screenshots/diagrams/charts (large areas of flat colour/text) as PNG/GIF
          Save photographs as JPEG

          • Re:LZW check, JPEG, erm... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by jandrese ( 485 ) * <kensama@vt.edu> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:02AM (#9947280) Homepage Journal
            It really depends what you are taking a screenshot of. A game screen (probably the most common screenshot type in existance) is going to be horrible with PNG unless you're taking screenshots of Pong. Even desktops are bad unless you unset that nifty photographic background and or pictures on a webbrowser etc...

            The point is, once the complexity of the image goes above "very simple" JPEG is going to give you a smaller file nearly every time. There are precious few images worth saving as a file that are "very simple". Worse, PNG ramps up in size very quickly as the complexity increases, which is what the original poster was talking about.

        • Re:LZW check, JPEG, erm... (Score:5, Informative)

          by ratamacue ( 593855 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @08:28AM (#9946452)
          PNG is a good replacement for .gif, but not for .jpg, yet.

          It never will be and never was intended to be, for exactly the reason you stated above: PNG is lossless, while JPEG is lossy. These are two different types of tool, which serve two different purposes. PNG will never achieve the compression rates of JPEG. Just use the right tool for the job.

          Would flac ever replace or eliminate the need for mp3 and ogg? No, for the same reason. flac, being lossless, serves an entirely different purpose than mp3 and ogg.

          (Some time in the future, I would imagine that disk space will become so cheap and abundant that lossy compression is unnecessary, but in that case I would say that cheap disks -- not lossless compression -- have eliminated the need for lossy compression.)

    • If these companies had been using proprietary software, nobody would have known what technologies they were using, so they wouldn't have been sued, would they?

      <G/D/R>

  • Pay to save? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Turn-X Alphonse ( 789240 )
    We're already seeing Pay to play games (MMORPGs) why do I get the feeling some company is going to get sick of patent wars like this and make a new image standard, get everyone onto it then slap on a 1p (2c) charge on each file saved just to screw over people for a few weeks untill the web-standard changes.

    • Re:Pay to save? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by hdd ( 772289 )
      i simply won't happen, for many if it ain't broken don't fix it. Perhaps it's possible to implement new standards into web browser quickly but what about other equipments? Digital camera, Photo develping station, and even high end tv that does jpg slideshow, not all can be fixed with a firmware update, if i am a ceo of sony, i too would rather pay a small fee to stay the way it is. Big company like sony won't take the risk and who cares what small company choose to do.

  • A decision has been made... (Score:5, Funny)

    by laserbeak ( 794029 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:50AM (#9945695)
    They are putting a 1 cent per pixel toll on all JPEG images. All funds are directed towards global domination.

  • Those Who Do Not Know History Are Doomed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pan T. Hose ( 707794 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:52AM (#9945704) Homepage Journal
    ...to Repeat It. We all remember the problems with GIF just few years ago. We solved them changing every single image on the Internet to JPEG. We all have to admit that it was foolish. We're weak on logic, that's the trouble with us. We're like the guy in the story who was caught in a sudden shower and who ran to a grove of trees and got under one. He wasn't worried, you see, because he figured when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one.

    • Actually many of the GIFs were actually replaced with PNGs [libpng.org]

      GIFs and PNGs support transparency [google.com] (something JPEGs can't do)

      In any case many of had followed history and not only changed our GIFs, but also our JPEGs to PNG. PNG is a powerful open standard for image compression that is supported by our internet overlords [w3.org].

      • Re:Those Who Do Not Know History Are Doomed (Score:4, Informative)

        by fuzzix ( 700457 ) <flippy@example.com> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:52AM (#9945848) Journal
        In any case many of had followed history and not only changed our GIFs, but also our JPEGs to PNG

        This cannot work for the simple reason that JPEG is designed specifically for lossy compression of photographs and other complex images. Think of it as mp3 type compression - discarding data with quality decreasing proportional to size. A great tool for the dialup age.

        PNG compression is entirely unsuited to this purpose - the level of compression for these types of images is terrible. Simple diagrammatical type images compress very well in PNG. Think of it as a zip type compression. Repeated elements of the image, such as whitespace which JPEG doesn't handle very well, are well suited to PNG. Ever zipped a log file? Plenty of repeated elements, great compression.

        Converting GIF to PNG? Fine, you'll likely end up with smaller files as a bonus.
      • Do you have any idea how much pr0n I have in jpeg?

        Excluding the files that I have not checked or catagorized and stored in my repository, I have 103533 jpeg files (7704.57 MB) on my hard drive at the moment.

        That's a lot of converting.

        LK

      • That is not so simple (Score:4, Funny)

        by Pan T. Hose ( 707794 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @06:22AM (#9945923) Homepage Journal

        Actually many of the GIFs were actually replaced with PNGs GIFs and PNGs support transparency (something JPEGs can't do) In any case many of had followed history and not only changed our GIFs, but also our JPEGs to PNG. PNG is a powerful open standard for image compression that is supported by our internet overlords.

        Changing every GIF to PNG on a site like Slashdot might have been easy even years ago when it was done, but some of us have quite a lot of important data stored in the JPEG format, which does not compress well with lossless PNG (e.g. anatomical photographs for scientific purposes). Just as an example:

        pth@ph9:28:/etc/X11$ du -sh ~/work/projects/.linuxx/.a/xxx/jpegs
        127G /home/pth/work/projects/.linuxx/.a/xxx/jpegs
        pth@ph9:28:/etc/X11$

        It is not a simple matter of:

        $ find ~ -iname '*.jpg' -exec convert {} {}.png ';'

        Well, actually it is, but it would take O(n) time (at least).

  • Notable quotes from the article (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:52AM (#9945706) Journal
    Under a fee agreement, Jenkens receives 50 percent of the revenue from licensing the patent, plus some expenses. The law firm's take so far is an estimated $50 million.
    Implying that Forgent has pulled $100 million out of the licensees. Also note that 50% is higher than usual for contingency fees, almost as if the law firm had been uncertain of the outcome.
    Forgent views the JPEG data-compression standard as possibly applying to MP3 players, according to documents filed in a Dallas County state district court lawsuit.

  • The patent game, and how big companies lose (Score:5, Interesting)

    by danamania ( 540950 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:54AM (#9945712)
    This has me thinking about the patent game large companies play. Take IBM, Apple, Microsoft - all with gigantic patent portfolios, and products that use many of them (and probably many of those of the other companies too). When IBM infringes on an Apple patent, they get together, cross license patents under certain conditions, and go on their merry way.

    This is all fine as a defense against a company that actually has a product. But take something like these smaller companies, who only own a patent portfolio, or perhaps one big patent altogether, and no products. They find that Adobe infringes on their patent and... Adobe have no recourse. No cross licensing to be done as the smaller company has no product. The smaller company may even be privately owned, so there's no chance of a simple cheap buyout.

    While we're all looking at MS, Apple, IBM, Adobe etc and going "tsk! omg!" as they acquire yet another silly patent, they're not necessarily the ones who're going to be a pain in the butt about it, it's the smaller rogues like Forgent, or Acacia etc.

    • Re:The patent game, and how big companies lose (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Halo1 ( 136547 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:18AM (#9945778)
      The big ones are not much better. If you are a small company with a product, IBM, Apple, Microsoft etc will just as happily use their patents against you if you happen to annoy them enough (or if they think they can extract enough pocket change from you). And the only reason that we have this silly system of software patents that allows this kind of racketeering, is exactly because the big companies pushed the patent offices and the courts to accept these kinds of patents.

      They're not the ones to pity, as it's mainly their fault we're stuck with the system as it is.
    • A large company has two option, pay or gut the patent but the second choice might wreak havoc on the whole system and at this point the large companies don't think thats a good risk.

      Of course if a company like this decides to go after an open source developer, the developer could be in a bad situation unless they can get help from someone like GNU or EFF. The open source community must start building a patent portfolio or at least a patent killing portfolio. The problem is someone has to pay for it and s
    • Big companies are held at bay by their competitions portfolios. If you are in a big company, especially Japanese, you are probably being asked to produce x patents per year. So what if they are not entirely relevant. So long as they are arguable and can tie a company up in court if they ever try to sue you.

      So IBM and Apple don't get together when they infringe. Because they always infringe each other. They get together when one gets pissed off for some reason. Or somebody hired new lawyers that didn'

  • PNG is not a solution (Score:3, Interesting)

    by barcodez ( 580516 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:54AM (#9945717)
    Last time I read up on this PNG is not suitable for photo realistic images. This is what JPEG does well - does anyone know of a good alternative?
    • PNG is fine for photorealistic images for your own use, and in fact they will look better than JPEGs because of PNG's lossless compression. I have a large number of my pictures archived as PNGs after scanning the slides or negatives...

      I'm guessing that what you really meant was that PNG is not suitable for photorealistic images on the web...

      I am also curious, so I will echo the parent's question: any good alternatives to JPEG for web based photos?

    • Re:PNG is not a solution (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @06:12AM (#9945901) Journal
      I can think of two successors to JPEG...

      JPEG 2000

      JPEG 2000 [jpeg.org] is "the" successor to JPEG (designed by the same team), and was noticeably better than JPEG when I checked out quality vs size, but it's patent encumbered. It is however intended to be royalty and license-fee free.

      Elysium Ltd has developed a freeware Netscape plugin [elysium.ltd.uk] to make IE, Opera and Netscape browsers able to view JPEG 2000 pictures. This plugin is for Windows, and I don't really know if there are others for other platforms.

      DjVu

      DjVu [djvuzone.org] was designed for the web to replace common formats like JPEG, GIF and TIFF. Although designed primarly for compressing text, it's very efficient at regular photos as well, and should compress similarly as JPEG 2000 (about half the size of JPEG with similar quality).

      DjVuLibre [djvuzone.org] is a GPL licensed open source implementation that includes plugins, viewers, and encoders for this format.
    • PNG + broadband + huge disks is quite acceptable, and will only get more acceptable as time goes on.

      JPEG 2k is much like jpeg, but you can get the same quality in 1/5th the file size. Also you can set it to be lossless, which gives better compression of photos than PNG does.

  • Honestly. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by johnnliu ( 454880 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:06AM (#9945754) Homepage
    I'm so sick of reading companies going after other companies on stupid patents.

    I mean, I start my day on /. and the first news is someone getting sued over JPEG. What a way to ruin my day.

    A business of just hoarding ideas and extracting patents, while not producing any real products is really not a business. My opinion (and a few million others) is just shut them down, dammit.

    But, what will my rant here do? It won't help anyone. :-(

    Anyway, I just end up depressed.

    While not a real solution to the people getting sued, I at least have a temporary solution for myself: untick YRO from my preferences.

    Sorry to the people affected by the law suites, you have my thoughts.

    • Re:Honestly. (Score:2, Funny)

      by templest ( 705025 )
      I mean, I start my day on /. and the first news is someone getting sued over JPEG. What a way to ruin my day.
      You mean you're waking up right now? This is the last thing I'm reading before going to sleep!

      For the record, it's 7:14AM right now

  • Two potential solutions... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:07AM (#9945756)
    • Start calling this "the porn patent" to see if they'll back off to avoid the bad PR.
    • Buy a bigger disk drive so you can convert your pron collection to PNG.

  • Vergy good! (Score:3, Funny)

    by DaneelGiskard ( 222145 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:12AM (#9945763) Homepage
    That gives motivation to move on to JPEG-2000 and other superiour formats. Of course, those are patented as well already, so let's just get out a pencil and a piece of paper and forget the whole Internet thing...

    Of course, someone will point me to pencil and paper patents now... ;-)

    • Re:Vergy good! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Tranzig ( 786710 )
      Actually JPEG 2000 might not be that good idea.

      "The up and coming JPEG 2000 standard has been prepared along these lines, and agreement reached with over 20 large organisations holding many patents in this area to allow use of their intellectual property in connection with the standard without payment of license fees or royalties. It is of course still possible that other organisations or individuals may claim intellectual property rights that affect implementation of the standard, and any implementors are

  • This is no suprise, as I destinctly remember how proud they were of the fact that their new acquired patent portfolio would bring in huge amounts of money.

    I believe the CEO was even quoted for saying that they "stumpled upon a goldmine".

    They featured "victorious" newpaper clippings from local newspapers, if someone cares to look for them on their site.

    z

  • Screwed by submarine patents again (Score:5, Informative)

    by hcdejong ( 561314 ) <hobbes@@@xmsnet...nl> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:14AM (#9945769)
    ...even though the Joint Photographic Experts Group tried to create a format that wasn't encumbered by patents [jpeg.org]. Where will the madness end?

  • I am all for an intelligent change in patent law. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Photo_Nut ( 676334 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:14AM (#9945771)
    If I could change patent law, I would do the following: Demand proof of damages.

    Patents are designed to defend against inventions. If I patent something useful, but don't actually have an implementation, I'm using the system to stifle others, and not really giving anything back.

    In order for something to be an invention, it needs to have an implementable form. Sure, I could patent something that I can't make, but if someone else comes along and figures it out independent of me, then I really shouldn't be able to sue them for having the same idea that I did, unless I actually built it.

    So IF forgent claims to have a patent, their patent needs to have an implementation which would serve as a test of requiring the patent. Otherwise, it's just an idea without an implementation.

    I could try and patent a perpetual motion machine, and might succeed, but if someone else succeeds in building one, they will have figured out the difficult detail that I didn't: how to break the laws of thermodynamics.

    And in a completely unrelated note, XP SP2 just finished installing. Only took about 5 minutes. I guess it pre-downloaded today.

    • Re:I am all for an intelligent change in patent la (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:23AM (#9945788) Homepage
      Patents are designed to defend against inventions. If I patent something useful, but don't actually have an implementation, I'm using the system to stifle others, and not really giving anything back....In order for something to be an invention, it needs to have an implementable form. Sure, I could patent something that I can't make, but if someone else comes along and figures it out independent of me, then I really shouldn't be able to sue them for having the same idea that I did, unless I actually built it.

      I would like to agree, and certainly agree with the spriti of what you're saying, but there is a practical problem too.

      Suppose I succesfully work out all the problems and design the perfect cold fusion-based reactor. There is no possible way for me to implement it - I have to go to an energy company to get a power plant built (at the very least, a bank who will loan me the utter fortune I require to construct it).

      At this point, under the changes you suggest the device is not patentable since it has not yet been implemented. What is to stop an unscrupulous energy company, or bank, or indeed anyone who gets wind of it from taking my design and implementing it themselves with no further input from me? Worse still, once they have the implementation it is they who will profit from obtaining a patent, not me.

      So the "no patent without implementation" idea is flawed. It's a shame, because it sounds like a good way out. But it wouldn't work as described.

      Incidently, I refused to have my name listed as the co-inventer on a patent my company wanted to file because I considered it so trivial as to be silly. I don't want my name associated with patent abuse, and if more people took that approach this problem simply wouldn't occur. That's a pipe-dream though.

      Cheers,
      Ian

      • if it's pure theory it shouldn't be patented in the first place.

        unless you can say "look this litte experiment shows it works" you should be told to go away.

        you can't just say "I think this'll work, if anyone actually invests in trying it gimme gimme gimme all teh royalties!!!1".

        once again: if your proof is just theoretical then it should not be patentable. what you're describing is a nightmare situation: what if Einstein had patented "a system and method of performing tasks utilising discrete electromag
      • Copyright law.... that's what it's there for.

        If they managed to implement something that would have been impossible without copying your ideas then the've broken copyright laws, no patent required.
      • If you patent an idea without an implementation, how do you know that your idea works?

        If you allow the patenting of things that don't work, we just get back to the stupidity of anti-gravity patents and the like.

        The main thing abotu software patents though, is that a proff of principle pience of software is usually cheap to develop, and actually does get developed as part of the invention process.

      • I think the number of "bedroom inventors" these days is sufficiently small that this is an acceptable loss for reigning in rampant patent abuse.

      • Suppose I succesfully work out all the problems and design the perfect cold fusion-based reactor.

        My objection is that the current patent system doesn't force you to actually prove you have worked out all the problems with a cold-fusion-based reactor. All you have to do is to write down some vague ideas about how it might work. Then you go and sue the folks who actually put in the sweat to really solve the problems and make it work. So much easier getting money this way than all that hard work actually

    • Well, you see it's a whole other and much less subtle deal in Forgent's case.

      They acquired a patent portfolio - which includes the patent with royalty-free license in question - from another company called Compression Labs which they bought back in 1997.

      Now they're relicensing the patent to cash in on it, and they're suing various digital camera manufacturers - starting with all the "big fish". They're being quite ruthless too, bragging about they're actions even.

      z
      • My theory about these recent cases of a patent parasite starting out suing some big company, such as Disney, is that they approach the big company, offer them something in exchange for "licensing" their patent, just so they can say "these guys signed, so you little guys have no chance". Notice the terms of the agreement are always confidential, so for all we know the big company could have paid basically nothing for the license, and may even be collecting a fee so their name could be used in the patent camp
    • I thought that the whole point of a patent application was that you had to supply enough detail that an expert in the field would be able to implement the thing covered by the patent?

      If that's the case and it's not being stuck to, then that's the fault of the patent office, for letting it slide, and the fault of patent applicatants, for gaming the system.

    • Wrong (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gr8_phk ( 621180 )
      "If I patent something useful, but don't actually have an implementation, I'm using the system to stifle others, and not really giving anything back."

      Patents allow startups with no implemenation or funding or manufacturing, to show thier idea to investors so they can bring it to market. Without this capability many smaller companies couldn't get started. A large company with much capability would steal the idea an put it in volume production before the inventor could get a good prototype working. Actual pr

  • The numbers don't seem to add up (Score:3, Interesting)

    by duvel ( 173522 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:19AM (#9945779) Homepage
    The numbers don't seem to add up. The article states:

    the past two years, the company has made about 90 percent of its revenue from patent negotiations, and its software has yet to get much of a foothold.

    In its fiscal 2003, for instance, software sales were just 8 percent of the company's $53.9 million in sales.
    These quotes say that $53.9 million in sales (which is consistent with what I find on Yahoo Financial [yahoo.com]comes for 90% from patent negatiations, and 8% from software sales. Nowhere on the net can I find anything about where that other 2% comes from (they don't seem to do any consulting for instance).

    Then there's these quotes:

    Already, Forgent has reaped nearly $50 million by claiming that one of its patents covers JPEG, the popular standard for digital images.

    Then there's Jenkens & Gilchrist, the Dallas-based law firm handling enforcement of the JPEG patent. Under a fee agreement, Jenkens receives 50 percent of the revenue from licensing the patent, plus some expenses. The law firm's take so far is an estimated $50 million.
    The first one says Forgent made $50 million on jpeg patents so far. The last claims the lawyers get half, and that is also $50 million.

    Not sure what I should think of a company that doesn't succeed in having it's numbers correctly communicated. I do know however that $50 million is peanuts on a global scale. Looking at Forgent' share price, the stock markets seem to agree with me.

    • The first one says Forgent made $50 million on jpeg patents so far. The last claims the lawyers get half, and that is also $50 million.

      No contradiction. Total amount: $100m. Forgent's cut? 50%, ie. $50m. Lawyer's cut? 50% ie. $50m.

      It just says Forgent has reaped nearly $50m, not that the gross licensing fees were $50m. For their statement to be correct, you can extrapolate the gross to be $100m.

      Cheers,
      Ian

    • If they have a good few million in the bank (as is plausible) then they could easily earn a couple of million in interest.

  • Weak position from Jpeg.org (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ishmalius ( 153450 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:22AM (#9945787)
    The standards group itself cannot state that the use of the specification will remain free from litigation, or lacks the courage to do so. How is the world to regard such a specification as anything other than critically suspect?.

    Check the site [jpeg.org] yourself, and try to find any pledge from them that the specifications for JPEG or JPEG2000 are safe to use.

    • Re:Weak position from Jpeg.org (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:32AM (#9945809)
      Check the site [jpeg.org] yourself, and try to find any pledge from them that the specifications for JPEG or JPEG2000 are safe to use.

      In a day and age when it isn't safe to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or put out some toys for kids to play with while their parents do business with you, how do you expect them to make such a pledge?

      KFG
      • What's wrong with peanut butter?

        Why not just require the loser in a law suit to pay the legal costs of the winner? You'd vastly reduce the numbers of nuisance lawsuits.
    • Why should the standards group state that use of the specification will remain free from litigation?

      Stating it doesn't mean that it is the case. They might have agreements from everybody involved in the making of the standard that they are granting a royalty free useage of all patents for the use of the standard (though I don't know this to be the case), but what can they do if someone decides to sue?

      As far as I'm aware, if I have a patent on flattening meat with a pencil and a sheet of paper, I could go

  • Run length coding? Patentable? Come on! (Score:5, Informative)

    by achurch ( 201270 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:41AM (#9945831) Homepage

    According to the earlier /. article, the patent in question is on run-length coding, and was issued in 1987. Unless it was submarined for a really long time, there's got to be prior art all over the place. If nothing else, the Amiga's IFF ILBM [thefreedictionary.com] image format uses RLC, and it's been around since 1985, at least.

    • Re:Run length coding? Patentable? Come on! (Score:5, Funny)

      by shish ( 588640 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @06:32AM (#9945946) Homepage
      I think Cave Man Og had prior art when he stopped saying "I have rock, rock, rock", and instead said "I have 3 rocks".

      But wait; this uses a computer, so it's an entirely new concept... never mind.

    • the patent in question is on run-length coding

      Then wouldn't the patent also cover BMP, GIF, and TGA formats? These are three I can name just off the top of my head that use (or have an option to use) run-length coding, and I think that TIFF might also have a RLC option.

      (assuming run-length-coding is the same as run-length- encoding)
    • The question is when was it filed, not issued.

      But I do find it insane that therers no prior art, or infact that it's not an inovative leap becase it's such a minor jump that everyone and his dog has thought of it.

      Hell I came up with the idea without much mental stressing, took me a while before I knew what it was called.

      But hey, someone else has probably got a patent on escape symbols which are used all over the shop.

  • When will it expires? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cpghost ( 719344 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:51AM (#9945846) Homepage

    When was that alledged patent filed? We may as well be patient and wait for it to expire, just like GIF, RSA etc...

  • Welcome to a new business type (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gilesjuk ( 604902 ) <<giles.jones> <at> <zen.co.uk>> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:57AM (#9945862)
    The parasite business model. Companies that buy or create patents then just sue everyone. We've seen SCO and Unisys (LZW patent), this sort of action seems to suggest a failing in their product line.

    I have no problem with companies protecting their innovative ideas to ensure their time and money invested is rewarded.

    I believe that you should only be able to defend patents and your inventions if you actually produce a product based upon them.

  • Opensource imlementations? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by varjag ( 415848 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @06:19AM (#9945917)
    I wrote and maintain an opensource JPEG implementation, so am pondering about potential consequences. Am no big corporation of course, so not likely to be targeted by the extorters, but still.. What would you recommend, given that:

    1. I am not a U.S. citizen;
    2. The project is hosted on a service under U.S. jurisdiction (SourceForge).

    Would it suffice to migrate the project to a non-US service?

    • Re:Opensource imlementations? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ender Ryan ( 79406 ) <TOKYO minus city> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:19AM (#9946839) Journal
      As a U.S. citizen myself, who is a software programmer, I worry nearly daily about the future of my career. Every week, I point out to everyone I know at least one ridiculous patent that is causing problems for businesses(usually small businesses) in this country. Most people don't care. I occasionally write my congress-critters, but that's relatively pointless too. Our politicians are 99% in the pocket of our corporations. I really believe that that isn't an exaggeration, but I could be somewhat off-base. In any case, we have a high rate of political corruption. That our politicians are working mostly for the corporations makes this a somewhat fascist country. It's not truly fascist yet, as there are many powers fighting each other for control, but we may get there some day.

      What's the point of this ridiculous rant? Simple. Don't let this happen wherever you live. Please. I might move there some day, just so I can continue in my chosen profession.

      As for your question... I don't think you should worry. If anyone bothers you, you can move your project somewhere else at that time. You have no obligation to care about this country's ridiculous IP laws.

      Cheers!

  • Patent? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Luigi30 ( 656867 )
    I thought SCO patented extortion.
  • to put more support to .png

  • David Versus Goliath? (Score:5, Funny)

    by argent ( 18001 ) <peter@slashdot . ... t a r o nga.com> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @06:42AM (#9945976) Homepage Journal
    "I believe this is just more proof that this David and Goliath story is just getting started," said Mannsbach, who said he holds close to 5 percent of Forgent's shares on behalf of clients.

    This would be some kind of "American McGee's David Vs Goliath", with a David hooked on heroin and using his sling to tie off when he shoots up... it's definitely some looking-glass version of the story, 'cos I remember the original David being the hero, not an opportunistic parasite.

  • Not quite so sure.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 12, 2004 @06:55AM (#9946027)
    {Stupid Joke Mode:ON}
    So, now, when's Xiph.org going to add a lossy codec for photorealistic picture in it's OGG software ?
    And then we'll start again some kind of "OGG/Twoflower" vs. "WindowsMedia/MS-JPEG-2004.NET" codec war.
    {/Stupid Joke Mode:OFF}

    Actually, I realy mean it !

    According to the foot note of this [imaging-resource.com] article,
    they don't have a patent for the JPEG compression standart it self,
    but for the run lenght encoding (RLE) compression which is used in one of the latest stage of JPEG compression.

    Which means two things :
    - It is not a threat to lossy compression.
    All the strenght of JPEG comes from the DCT (discret cosine transforme) and the subsequent quantization, which convert the picture into a stream of more compressible values repetitive values (and thus perfom the actual "lossy" steps).
    RLE isn't the only way for compress these values,

    One can use algorithms similar to those used in the final steps by Xiph's (!) Speex or by Monkey Audio (=Rice).

    So one can imagine that Xiph could easily create a temporary JPEG replacement until some realy better (Wavelet based ?) patent-free format is created.
    (Hence my stupid joke at the begining).

    - Second thing :
    There's probably A LOT of prior acts for this patent, as LZW was one of the most popular compression algorithme on the old personnal computers of the 80s.

  • Prior art according to wikipedia, yet... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by deragon ( 112986 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @06:55AM (#9946028) Homepage Journal
    From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG#Potential_patent _issues [wikipedia.org]

    The JPEG committee investigated the patent claims in 2002 and found that they were invalidated by prior art. Nevertheless, between 2002 and 2004 Forgent was able to obtain about $90 million by licensing their patent to some 30 companies. In April 2004 Forgent sued 31 other companies to enforce further license payments. In July of the same year, a consortium of 21 large computer companies filed a countersuit, with the goal of invalidating the patent.
    I guess the prior art does not stand in court.

  • Who was the idiot... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Yaa 101 ( 664725 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @07:28AM (#9946165) Journal
    That chose a patented tech to be nominated to be a industry standards?

    • Re:Who was the idiot... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Halo1 ( 136547 )
      It's hard to find any kind of algorithm that does not fall under any kind of patent of some sorts. The JPEG consortium had received pledges from all patent owners that they would not assert their patents however. Then one of those companies went broke, its patents were bought by Forgent and the rest is history, as they say.

  • RLE is to JPEG as "make it a round shape" is to CD (Score:3, Informative)

    by t_allardyce ( 48447 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @08:11AM (#9946376) Journal
    Actually Forgent doesn't own JPEG it owns (according to the last Slashdot article) run-length encoding which is used in many more things than JPEG including fax compression. To say RLE is what makes JPEG would be misleading, to sue people for it would be to sue CD manufactures because you came up with the idea of making the disk a circle shape. Now what RLE is, is basically counting the number of repeating symbols, in a line, in a data stream, and replacing that sequence with a special symbol that basically says "there are 352 X's here" or "352X" etc. That basically means Forgent is not only a pile of shit, they are 352shit. Looking at the DCT algorithm in JPEG it is a masterful weave of mathematical genius as beautiful as the scantily glad Victorias secret models it purveys to millions around the world and had Forgents team of dedicated masters spent years perfecting this and had they bled their souls and bodies daily into the project i might find it in me to see an ounce of respect and maybe they would deserve some royalties from those who would use the algorithm for solely commercial gain. but they don't and they didn't. They bought RLE and now they want to milk the world for a 'technology' even a judge could understand!

    • From a patent perspective, the assemblers on IBM mainframes in the 60's had an assembler directives like this:
      LABEL DC CL132'A'
      Basically, what this is: Declare Constant, Character Lenth 132, filled with 'A'. It is a Run Length Encoding, and it preceded GIF, JPEG, etc... by more than 15 years.

      Likewise, the dup directive was available in PC assemblers long before RLE was patented.

      So, anyone with the guts to fight these guys could easily invalidate their patent with prior art. The idea of run

  • Small and medium-sized companies don't act (Score:4, Insightful)

    by FlorianMueller ( 801981 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:31AM (#9947659) Homepage
    I'm also against software patents but I think it's too simple an explanation to blame the large corporations only. Yes, the big organizations typically want software patents, and I see them how they push very hard for software patents in the EU where we have that ongoing legislative process.

    However, I also see the major mistake of small and medium-sized enterprises: They don't act. Large corporations understand that politics affect business, so they view political activities as part of their business. Small and medium-sized enterprises are usually run by people who believe that it's "prudent" to focus on the "core business" and not to do anything serious on the political front.

    The narrowmindedness and ignorance of most small and medium-sized enterprises makes it very easy for the large corporations to get what they want, and to defend it later.

    Look at most industry associations: They claim to speak on behalf of numerous small companies but are pretty much under the control of a few large members. An organization like the SIIA should fight against software patents every day. It should be their #1 priority because nothing is a bigger business risk to software companies than those absurd software patents. Instead, the SIIA just asks for more funds to be provided to the USPTO. Sure, with more resources, the USPTO may be able to examine patent applications more carefully. Still the real solution is to do away with patents on computer program logic, i.e. mental steps. And where are the organizations, except for some open source and civil rights organizations, that truly fight against software patents?

    Maybe, at the end of the day, many small and medium-sized enterprises just pay the price for political ignorance and inactivity. Right now, there would be an excellent chance to get software patents abolished in the EU, and that would be a signal for other regions of the world (especially if things work out well for the EU, and I'm quite sure they would because software patents stifle innovation and adversely affect economic growth).

  • Lawyers, patents, and investors... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gillbates ( 106458 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:36AM (#9947720) Homepage Journal

    The ex-Jenkens lawyers filed a counterclaim to recover millions of dollars in past and possibly future fees they say they're entitled to as the architects of Forgent's patent-licensing strategy.

    So basically, these lawyers patented the business model of suing other companies for patent infringement and are now trying to collect royalties on Forgent collecting royalties from the JPEG patent. Follow that?

    But it gets better:

    Already, Forgent has reaped nearly $50 million...

    Jenkens receives 50 percent of the revenue from licensing the patent, plus some expenses. The law firm's take so far is an estimated $50 million.

    So, let me get this straight:

    • Forgent has paid out 50 Million in legal fees, so that:
    • Forgent could receive 50 Million in patent royalties, and
    • They now owe the lawyers half of any remaining royalties they collect...

    So basically, they've made no profit on their first $50M in revenues, their lawyers own half of all their subsequent royalties, and their ex-law firm is suing them for whatever is left.

    What can I say, but that I'm glad I don't own stock in Forgent.... They may have a patent portfolio, but they don't have a clue.

  • Statute of Limitations (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jinxidoru ( 743428 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:37AM (#9947739) Homepage
    Isn't there some sort of statute of limitations on these patent issues? If not there should be. It seems to a popular activity for patent-holders lately to wait quietly by while others infringe on their patents. They wait until the company becomes big enough, then they bounce on the offenders like a little fat kid walking through the desert who sees a piece of chocolate cake.

    That's what has bothered me from the beginning about SCO (I know it's not a patent issue here, but close enough). Why hadn't anyone said anything about Linux stealing System V code before? It's not like Linux is all that new. It appears that they just waited until someone with deep enough pockets was close enough to Linux that they could attack.

    There should be a law enacted where if you know that someone is infringing on one of your patents, you have one or two years to litigate. After that point, your rights to litigation would be revoked. Now it would be difficult to prove prior knowledge of the infringement, but it's better than our current system.

  • Expiring soon? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:45AM (#9947824)
    From what I've been able to find out, the patent in question is 4,698,672, which was filed on Oct. 27, 1986 and granted on Oct. 6, 1987.

    Shouldn't that patent be expiring on Oct. 6, 2004? If so, this won't be an issue for very long.

  • Tivo??? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cramer ( 69040 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @12:47PM (#9949410) Homepage
    Ok, this is just bull. Please point to the JPEG's on a TiVo. I'll wait...

    *ding*

    There aren't any. All the icons (the balls, the star, network logos, the "blue wiener", etc.), and loopsets (i.e. slide shows like the little tivo guy in the upper left corner) are PNG formated images. I don't think Tivo would've changed to JPEG in the last few years. Everything else is an MPEG2 or raw graphics written onto the overlay (eg. the menu borders.) Fonts are standard true-type fonts -- non-compressed as I recall. (even "easily" replacable.)

    [I don't expect anyone from Tivo, Inc. to step up to answer exactly how they do all the gfx.]

  • Patent is Invalid (Score:4, Interesting)

    by KeithIrwin ( 243301 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:04PM (#9949662)
    The patent claims the process of Huffman encoding and/or run-length encoding digital signals. The CCITT Group 3 Fax machine standard used run length encoding followed by Huffman encoding to compress the digital signals before transmission. It was issues in 1980, six years before the patent.

    I don't understand why any company would capitulate when the prior art is quite as obvious as the digital fax machine. I'll wager that they've even used a fax machine in persuing their claims.

  • fools gold (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:20PM (#9949873) Homepage Journal
    Anyone else notice how Sony and Adobe ruthlessly pursue people who infringe their copyrights, and spend millions on useless, counterproductive DRM, but cough up millions to these invalid patent claimjumpers?

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