Suddenly a JPEG Patent and Licensing Fee 1223
Michael Long writes "Forgent Networks (www.forgentnetworks.com) has announced that it owns the software patent on JPEG compression technology, and has stated that it is "in contact" with computer, software, camera, and other digital imaging product manufacturers regarding licensing terms. This ambush of the digitial imaging industry will probably stand as the worst public relations nightmare a company can inflict upon itself."
Re:Didn't apple try this? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html [gnu.org]
Apple is strangling Firewire adoption (IEEE 1394) with patent royalty fees.
Patent abstract and link (Score:5, Informative)
Abstract: 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 processed and compared with one or more thresholds for determining one of several modes of operation. After processing in some mode, the processed signals are in the form of digital numbers and these digital numbers are coded, using ordered redundancy coding, and transmitted to a receiver.
Re:Didn't apple try this? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:They should do well with this... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Didn't apple try this? (Score:2, Informative)
Fields of use / patent ownership vs creation? (Score:5, Informative)
First, they mention owning the patent for all fields of use except satellite broadcast...does that mean that if I'm going to prepare a digital photo for satellite Internet trasmission, their patent doesn't cover it?
Second, they mention declaring that they have / own / control the patent, but they don't mention who developed the technology. Does anybody know if they just bought the patent from someone? Did they actually come up with the technology? Or did they sign a contract with a patent holder who has given them exclusive licensing rights for certain fields of use?
JPEG does appear to be patent-encumbered [w3.org], by patents such as this one [sri.com], but I can't find any references to Forgent or the patent number referenced in its press release.
How can they have a patent? (Score:2, Informative)
full patent application here (Score:3, Informative)
it's kinda long. will talk more when i go through the damn thing.
This is so broad......... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Now PNG (Score:5, Informative)
Sometimes you need a lossless compression, and for that purpose PNG usually gives you the smallest file among lossless compressions.
But sometimes you want a lossy compression to be able to get smaller resulting files. I just picked a random JPG file off my harddisk and converted it to PNG. The file grow by a factor nine.
PNG is a good alternative to GIF, bug PNG is not a good alternative to JPG.
Re:Fields of use / patent ownership vs creation? (Score:3, Informative)
It is owned by the company listed as a subsidiary of forgent in the news story, and the names of all the inventors are listed on the patent.
The patent doesnt mention the word jpg or jpeg _that i noticed_ but instead goes deeply into the formulaic algorhythm covering how it is done. Wonder if they are gearing up to jump on anyone who uses a close algorhythm for compression? (wouldnt that suck for all the DiVX developers out there?)
maeryk
Re:Didn't apple try this? (Score:5, Informative)
This is the oldest myth in the book, and one of the most oft repeated I see. .25 per unit is 'strangling' the adoption rate.
While Apple helped develop the FireWire spec, it doesn't collect all the licensing fees. The licensing fees go to the IEEE1394 consortium (of which Apple's a member) and it's the consortium that decides the division of the licensing monies on a patent-by-patent basis.
Also, I wouldn't say that
Unlawful patent (Score:3, Informative)
Excellent JPEG INFO FAQ.
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/jpeg-faq/
The JPEG standard was designed by the "Joint Photographic Experts Group"
This patent is either totally off base, or someone is playing games with the patent system. There is no way that this patent will stand up as is.
This is a US parent (Score:3, Informative)
In the UK/europe you cann't (yet) patent
Gene sequences,
Computer Software
Business Models
etc....
So why the hell should countries that don't allow that kind of patent bother to act on them.
Move all your R+D &co out-side the US when you want to avoid US laws like DMCA and stupid patents
Even better lobby the government whatever county you in not to accept those stupid patents.
I have never read the JPEG patent but using applied first principles I could probably come up with several lossy/non-lossy compression algoithms that violate that patent. There no real added value in applying first principles.
Re:I'm outraged! (Score:2, Informative)
also, the article was posted a week ago.
something I noticed from reading it is that it's not patented in satellite broadcasts. Hey, lets all use satellite internet! Or maybe DirecTV, etc. actually uses jpg for transmitting video?
Patent Office info on the patent (Score:3, Informative)
You can look at the online version of the patent [164.195.100.11] on the US Patent Office's website [uspto.gov]. Note that the patent process for this one was started 16 years ago in 1986 (stuff 4698672 into the Patent Number Search box on the search page [uspto.gov] to see this), which would certainly limit how much longer it could be pursued.
To me, the patent seems to largely be focussed around runlength encoding in digital video - not that this always has any real bearing on how a specific patent can suddenly become profitable. That patent itself states:
[...]It'll be interesting, and rather sad, to see if this actually get applied against JPEGs....
Re:Probably not a problem... (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry.
Re:Patent abstract and link (Score:1, Informative)
Sounds like huffman compression to me..
Re:Wha? (Score:5, Informative)
Rambus anyone? (Score:1, Informative)
"Once again something that could have been brought to my attention, YESTERDAY!!!"-Adam Sandler(The Wedding Singer)
Sony caved in (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Expiration (Score:5, Informative)
why don't the jpeg ppl meantion this? (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.jpeg.org/public/jpeghomepag
It mentions that the jpeg standard was a colaboration between a group of compainies and ppl. Nothing mentioned about a patent by this company. So are these people claiming to have invented the jpeg before these people standardized it?
Re:who cares? (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the problem. PNG is a good solution when you want lossless compression, which is (not coincidentally) exactly what GIF did. This matters when you actually care about the numbers in the image, or when you've got certain kinds of content (sharp edges and smooth color gradients in particular). JPEG is appropriate when you have pictures that look more like the real world... lots of variation, certain frequency distributions, tons of detail. The reason it works so well is that it removes information that you-the-user can't see and then does lossless compression on the rest. That is something that PNG doesn't do.
IANAL, but offhand I see two good bets for defeating this patent claim. The first is that it expires in two years: it was granted in 1987. The other is prior art: the original JPEG group was formed in 1985 by combining CCITT and ISO working groups trying to do roughly the same thing. (Source: The History of ISO 10918 [lanl.gov]. I wasn't there; I'd appreciate corrections.) This patent seems to cover most of the components of JPEG and some of MPEG, and I just can't imagine that the JPEG committee hadn't come up with at least some of that by 1987.
That said, I do hack video and image encoders but I'm not a lawyer. I hope to see this claim shot down in flames. Quickly. I'm bothered by the idea that someone could out of the blue come and claim patent rights over my dissertation before I even finish it.
Re:This is so broad......... (Score:3, Informative)
I hardly think that AVI, MPEG or PNG and some other popular formats were exists or known...
Re:JPEG 2000? (Score:2, Informative)
#1 Companies are required to come forward with any technology within OpenGL that might step on the toes of some rights they might have on that technology. This is required by the ARB, Microsoft was only doing the "right thing" as many other companies have done in the past
#2 If you want to blame anybody for this Unisys would be the one to point the fingers at after the Gif fiasco they pulled.
While you may dislike Microsoft a great deal, you might want to turn off your skewed view on the world on occasion...
JPEG was formed in 1985. (Score:5, Informative)
A brief history of JPEG, which started in 1985. I think it can be fought on the premise that the patent was based on the work of the consortium, and not the work of the person who filed the patent. First to invent, not first to file.
Re:so? (Score:3, Informative)
Patents may be defended at the owners choice. They don't expire due to lack of use. Trademarks
do if they aren't defended.
Re:Didn't apple try this? (Score:2, Informative)
> Apple has a similar claim to ideas used within
> PNG's not GIF's.
They have a claim, yes, but they are not pressing it. Seems Apple, out of the goodness of their hearts, these days is a big believer in royalty free web standards (and open standards period). As long as they have a bit of their own proprietary stuff to be special, sell computers, and can crow about how innovative they are, they are quite happy to share some of their stuff.
Furthermore, a big chunk of Apple's customers is the creative folk. This is precisely the group that would be the first (besides Slashdot) to scream bloody murder if Apple tried something like this with a graphics file format. Apple has done the occasional dumb thing, and once nearly killed themselves with their greed and stupidity, but hopefully they are not that stupid.
"What I'm thinking is different from what you are."
Belabera, "Mothra 3" 1998
Re:I'm outraged! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:They should do well with this... (Score:5, Informative)
The important part:
--xPhase
Re:JPEG 2000? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:JPEG 2000? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Pfffft. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:They should do well with this... (Score:2, Informative)
Wrongo (Score:3, Informative)
This is the big reason the patent system is screwed. The little guy, and that may well include Forent in this case, has no leverage against the big guys.
Joint Photographic Experts Group (Score:3, Informative)
Doesn't JPEG stand for Joint Photographic Experts Group [jpeg.org] ? Isn't this the group that came up with the JPEG format in the first place?
According to JPEG what most of us believe to be JPEG files are actually JFIF which are royalty free thanks to C-Cube Microsystems. So Forgent Might not be due that much in royalties after all.
This might be a good thing after all. The restrictions on GIFs spawned a much better file format (PNG). This could do the same for Lossy Images.
Re:What have they actually patented? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Expiration (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No more jpegs? (Score:3, Informative)
It is actually started from the quadrature mirror filter approach (filtering with complimentary high/low pass FIR filters and comressing the residual) - just happened to be equivalent of a analysis with some crazy basis function.. > What if I were to write an LGPL's wavelet encoder?
You may be in trouble. While the actual algorithms (essentially - denoising, by setting low coefficients to 0) are not patentable, their use for the purpose of compressing an image is patentable. And a lot of fine details of such "use" were in fact grabbed by various outfits (from color space selection, to selective detailing - when some area of an image, with higher "volatility" get more detailed treatment, and dozens of other detail)
Look at JPEG2000 literature - some references. There is a reason it did not replace DCOS (even being faster - it is O(N), not O(NlogN) as Fourier - and has better selection of operations. - in MPEG4 - patents and royalties it is..
Mother fucking parasites.
Re:I'm outraged! (Score:5, Informative)
Scientific American actually has a good article [sciam.com] about so-called "submarine" patents. Turns out there are ways to file for a patent and then delay its issuance for years. The details of the patent remain secret until it is issued. When the patent "surfaces" years after it's been filed, anyone who unknowingly used that idea is at the mercy of the patenteer.
An inventor named Lemelson was notorious for doing this sort of thing (see the article). He delayed one patent for 40 years after filing for it. Seems to me like a good (read "underhanded") way to make money off your ideas if you're (a) patient, and (b) too lazy to actually build and sell a product.
ALTERNATIVE TO JPEG (Score:2, Informative)
http://djvu.sourceforge.net
Re:Now PNG (Score:1, Informative)
> and converted it to PNG. The file grow by a
> factor nine
>
Try this:
http://pmt.sourceforge.net/pngcrush/
Once Again: The Doctrine of Laches (Score:4, Informative)
"Laches is recognized as an equitable defense available to defendants in patent infringement litigation under 35 U.S.C. Section 282 (1988). Laches enables the infringer to avoid liability if the patent holder delays too long before commencing litigation. The doctrine flows from the longstanding, fundamental legal principle that equity will not protect those who sleep on their rights."
Reference: The Doctrine of Laches and Patent Infringement Litigation at URL:
http://tinyurl.com/pzt
Original URL before tinyurling:
http://www.converium.com/web/converium/converiu
Crow
Re:I'm outraged! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Pantent? (Score:3, Informative)
Who's Really Driving This? (Score:4, Informative)
"Forgent and a national law firm, who has made and continues to make a significant investment to develop Forgent's IP licensing program, are the sole beneficiaries of the patent license revenue."
Hmmm, notice that the law firm is not named. Maybe anonymity is in its contract with Forgent. Just in case you feel compelled to comment to Forgent, here's the contact info on their page:
Forgent Media Relations:
Hedy Baker, 512/437-2789
hedy_baker@forgent.com
Re:Pantent? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I'm outraged! (Score:2, Informative)
PNG birthplace != compuserve (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/#history [libpng.org] (By the way, despite the implications in some of CompuServe's old press releases and in occasional trade-press articles, PNG's development was not instigated by either CompuServe or the World Wide Web Consortium, nor was it led by them. Individuals from both organizations contributed to the effort, but the PNG development group exists as a separate, Internet-based entity.)
Re:I'm outraged! (Score:2, Informative)
Start spamming the media relations department...
Forgent Media Relations:
Hedy Baker, 512/437-2789
hedy_baker@forgent.com
Of course this could just be to get some press coverage, cause bad press is better than no press.
Re:JPEG 2000? (Score:2, Informative)
It was a part of an extentions provided by Independant Vendors. The ARB was reviewing it for inclusion in the offical OpenGL spec, but it was not yet a part of the offical OpenGL.
MS did the only proper thing they could, they came forward ahead of time to let the ARB (which they are a member of) know that they may have a pending patent on a technology they were considering using.
Re:They should do well with this... (Score:5, Informative)
Why?
JPG is a lossy encoding mechanism. It disacrds a significant amount of information in any given image to create smaller file size.
PNG is a lossless encoding mechanism. It uses several very intelligently designed formulas and structures to very efficiently encode an image to reduce its file-size without losing any image data.
Because of this difference, PNG files of all but the simplest images will *always* be larger than corresponding JPG files.
For simple graphics like logos, stylized text, and flat-shaded cartoons, PNG can be made to produce better looking images at lower filesize than JPG or even GIF. For this reason, PNG is idea for making simple graphics for websites such as blocks of color, logos, etc. For photographic or shaded images of any kind, JPG is simply better at producing better image quality at smaller filesizes.
Now, if you're on any kind of broadband connection, that point becomes pretty moot since the difference between downloading a 10k jpeg and a 100k PNG is less than a second. On modem connections, moving to all PNG would make the internet completely void of all but the simplest graphics.
IMHO, it's time to build a lossy format for storing graphics similar to Ogg Vorbis. Perhaps the video codec Ogg just released can be used to make reasonable single-framed movies? Anyone familiar with the format care to comment?
Patent claim 5 covers JPG/spectral partitioning (Score:3, Informative)
Claim 5: The method of claim 1 wherein said first values have the highest frequency of occurrence in said digital signals, wherein said second values have the next highest frequency of occurrence in said digital signals, and wherein said other values have the lowest frequency of occurrence in said digital signals.
The argument is that this claim covers spectral partitioning techniques, which are the basic ideas behind the DCT as used in Jpg, and the decomosition in wavelet partitionings. The basic idea used is to separate out the high frequency and low frequency components, and you encode the relivant components first.
Thus you can EASILY argue that this patent claim covers jpg (DCT) and wavelet based compression algorithms. It doesn't matter HOW the image is decomposed into spectral components, be it DCT or wavelet, for purposes of this patent.
Also, its going to be a bit of a hunt for prior art, because it was filed in 1986.
IANAL
JPEG, not .jpg (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This is so broad......... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm outraged! (Score:2, Informative)
The legal doctrine is called adverse possession, and there are many requirements, it is almost impossible to successfully make the claim. One requirement (in most states) is that you must openly and notoriously occupy the land for the entire duration (usually 20 years or more). Just moqing a bit over the property line is not enough. And if someone is openly staking a claim to part of your yard for 20 years and you do nothing, I personally think you deserve to lose it.
More on Forgent (Score:5, Informative)
So the attitude there is to become a "IP" company and milk profits from patents that they hold, they now offer deep incentives for employees that think of patentable ideas, and are (of course) predicting large revenue gains from enforcing current patents. The downside to this is that many of there patents expire in about 4 years, so they better hurry up with the litigation if they want to make any money.
I should note that Forgent is not a huge company, so there going to have a focused set of civil suites to companies that A: have deep pockets, B: are profiting off patents they own.
-Jon
Re:This is so broad......... (Score:2, Informative)
I like the idea given that people should be required to make public claim to something within a set amount of time.
They made a public claim when they were awarded the patent. You just got it off a public Web site for your own post. All patents are, by definition, public knowledge.
Re:They should do well with this... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not a lawyer, but I was one of the people in the working group that developed PNG. (I'm credited in the spec under the name Robert Poole, although I don't think they updated my contact info recently.) PNG uses the same compression scheme used in GNU gzip, and that scheme was chosen specifically because it had been well researched and found to not conflict with any current patents. It also gives fairly decent performance and compression ratios for highly entropic data.
That's not to say that some other aspect of the PNG spec won't come under fire -- the file format is similar enough to TIFF and the Amiga's IFF/ILBM that if there are some core patents on tagged file formats, we could be in trouble. But that's doubtful, since prior art would probably play a role in any defense against such a patent assault. Bottom line -- if PNG comes under fire, the FSF lawyers would be all over the situation.
Re:Now PNG (Score:2, Informative)
THEN compare.
Forgent Networks isn't the first! (Score:2, Informative)
A company named EFI has tried a similar tactic. Now don't feel too smug because you're a small developer - they're targeting *ALL* developers large and small... This won't effect the large companies but will stifle the individual contributor!
"I would like you all know this
EFI ( www.efi.com ) is sending legal citations (Texas Court) to more than
200 small , medium or large companies which created any image editing
software that is able to scan , manipulate and print pictures . They claim
these companies ( even very small shareware companies) are infringing their
(year 1984) patent about scanning , color manipulating trough RGB or CMYK
systems and printing pictures . This sounds just like the other famous claim
of "Unisys" about the gif patent
Among those companies have been cited Microsoft ( Picture it! and Photodraw
software), Corel (photopaint), Ulead(photoimpact and photoexpress) and Jasc (Paint Shop Pro)
It seems that Adobe and Xerox registered and paid a fee in 1988 for using
that patent in their software . So they are the only few companies who are
not involved in this infringement
So if you are willing to make your own image editor I would think twice
about it : it's sad but true
[Extracted from Google's newsgroup archive of borland.public.delphi.non-technical]
Note that there's nothing obvious on their site: [http://www.efi.com/]
Re:I'm outraged! (Score:2, Informative)
The basic similarity between MPEG and JPEG is on MPEG I-frames where the DCT is used which is essentially the same use as JPEG, however...
MPEG is not "A series of JPEG" files because of the other frame types, I-frames are complete data frames, the other two frames rely on data in the I frame. MJPEG is a series of Jpeg files, which is about equal to an MPEG of all I frames.
I think this is worth noting: (Score:2, Informative)
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION
Title: A COMBINED INTRAFRAME AND INTERFRAME TRANSFORM CODING SYSTEM
Ser. No.: 479,766 Filed: 83/03/28 (now abandoned)
"The patent describes a single-pass digital video compression system which implements a two-dimensional cosine transform with intraframe block-to-block comparisons of transform coefficients without need for preliminary statistical matching or preprocessing.
"
There's the DCT part that both JPEG and MPEG use, and likewise a whack of other video compression technologies.
"Each frame of the video image is divided into a predetermined matrix of spatial subframes or blocks. The system performs a spatial domain to transform domain transformation of the picture elements of each block to provide transform coefficients for each block. The system adaptively normalizes the transform coefficients so that the system generates data at a rate determined adaptively as a function of the fullness of a transmitter buffer. The transform coefficient data thus produced is encoded in accordance with amplitude Huffman codes and zero-coefficient runlength Huffman codes which are stored asynchronously in the transmitter buffer. The encoded data is output from the buffer at a synchronous rate for transmission through a limited-bandwidth medium. The system determines the buffer fullness and adaptively controls the rate at which data is generated so that the buffer is never completely emptied and never completely filled."
Yes, this sounds exactly like JPEG.
Re:The patent doesn't cover JPEG (Score:2, Informative)
No, he doesn't. He's using the language in a very technical fashion, not a common fashion. An image can be processed as a raster stream. An image is also "video" as opposed, for instance, to "audio." This is especially true in scanning systems that are build to handle continuous images -- images of effectively infinite length. The processing has to be built to handle a "video stream."
Re:They should do well with this... (Score:2, Informative)
"For photographic or shaded images of any kind, JPG is simply better at producing better image quality at smaller filesizes"
better image quality? you just finished saying png is lossless, and jpg is lossy. how can it be better image quality? its WORSE image quality. but at a much better file size.
that is all.
Re:They should do well with this... (Score:3, Informative)
There is a lot of misunderstanding in the open source community as to how patents work. The claims made by Ogg Vorbis (i.e. it is patent free) are extremely unlikely to be true.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
There seems to be a lot of misundestanding in you how Ogg Vorbis is (was) developed. It was *specifically* designed with prior knowledge of the existing patents in mind, and 2 independant patent searches were done (one of which by AOL!) to verify that nothing was being infringed.
It is completely free of any patent burden.
--
GCP
Its made available to the PUBLIC DOMAIN already (Score:2, Informative)
"JPEG is short for the 'Joint Photographic Experts Group'. This was (and is) a group of experts nominated by national standards bodies and major companies to work to produce standards for continuous tone image coding. The 'joint' refers to its status as a committee working on both ISO and ITU-T standards. The 'official' title of the committee is ISO/IEC JTC1 SC29 Working Group 1, and is responsible for both JPEG and JBIG standards.
The best known standard from JPEG is IS 10918-1 (ITU-T T.81), which is the first of a multi-part set of standards for still image compression. A basic version of the many features of this standard, in association with a file format placed into the public domain by C-Cube Microsystems (JFIF) is what most people think of as JPEG!
Hopefully this site will improve your knowledge of the real work of the JPEG committee."
Read the patent for yourself. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Pantent? (Score:1, Informative)
Speaking only in the case of U.S. patent law, the following applies:
There is no requirement for the patentee to assert the patent at any particular time during the patent life. However, there is also no provision in patent law for any damages accruing until the patentee notifies the alleged infringer. IOW, the patent holder cannot collect on infringements for any activities prior to when the patentee provides notification to the alleged infringer. Take a look at 35 U.S.C. 287 [cornell.edu], which codifies U.S. patent infringement damages. To my knowledge the "marking" provisions in 287 don't apply to this technology, so "actual notice" is required. In addition, with or without marking, there can be no damages for any activities more than 6 years prior to the actual filing of suit against the alleged infringer. See 35 U.S.C. 286 [cornell.edu] for this.
There is also in a case such as this appears, the equitable doctrines of "laches" and "estoppel" that may be applicable. Without getting into the finer points, "laches" encompasses "undue delay" on the part of the patent holder that is to the "material detriment" of the the alleged infringer. "Estoppel" is a more general doctrine, where the plaintiff (usually the patent holder) is "estopped" from prevailing on the charge (roughly meaning: "The court stops you in your tracks and will not allow you to prevail on that allegation") due to the plaintiff's own actions in relation to the matter.
In a very brief nutshell, those are at least some of the doctrines under patent law,* outside of the usual outright invalidity arguments under 35 U.S.C. 101 [cornell.edu] (patentable subject matter), 35 U.S.C. 102 [cornell.edu] (novelty), 35 U.S.C. 103 [cornell.edu] (non-obviousness), and 35 U.S.C. 112 [cornell.edu] (enablement/written description/disclosure of best mode), that are available as a defense for alleged infringer.
* There may also be others, depending upon the patent prosecution history and any evidence uncovered in the discovery and trial phases of a law suit.
Yeah, mod me down twice: once for posting AC, and once for IAAL.
Read and discover they have no claim (Score:4, Informative)
First, the patent talks about 2 encoding schemes and applying them to various scenarios.
A) Run-length encoding the amplitude of digitally sampled signal. An idea older than time, but not used in JPEG, so who cares.
B) Huffman encoding the amplitude of a digitally sampled signal. David Huffman (at latest) came up with the encoding scheme in 1953 (basing off him being in grad school when making it and age at death [ucsc.edu]), so I think we can establish prior art.
But the real issue is JPEG, which is the lossy end of the coding scheme. This involves (excuse my math) a Discrete Cosine Transformation to translate the amplitues into the coefficients of the frequencies being encoded.
Huffman encoding doesn't come in until the lossless compression stage, which is technically not JPEG, but JFIF, the file system wrapped around the JPEG encoding scheme that makes JPEG encodning into a JPEG file we all know and love... a minor distinction, but again, any monkey can show prior art.
Re:Equitable Estoppel aka Rambus all over again (Score:5, Informative)
At the time, one of the writings mentioned a thing called "Equitable Estoppel." My interpretation was that if you had a patent that was becoming an industry standard, you had to begin notification "promptly," and to allow it to become a standard and *then* begin notifying/litigating was legally naughty.
Bearing in mind that equitable estoppel is a very new area of law (well, less than a century old anyway) that differs in the different common law jurisdictions, the basic principle behind it is that if:
then the party who has the legal rights can be prevented (estopped) from enforcing them.
Now, this varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and bearing in mind that in the United States there are 50 jurisdictions (or 51 if you count Louisiana, where I don't think this applies at all), some of the details will vary depending on where you are.
But yes, equitable estoppel might be a valid defence to this patent claim, subject to proving that the aggressor knew people were adopting JPEG because of a belief that it was patent free
IANALY,TINLA
Another junk patent... sigh (Score:2, Informative)
Consider a data stream like
0000000000100000010000001000002000000100000
Ordinary null suppression gives you a code like
R10 L1 R6 L1 R6 L1 R5 L2 R6 L1 R5 L1 R4 L4 R4 L1 R6 L3 R4 L1
Their "invention" is to use a different sort of encoding when a run is followed by the next-most-frequent character:
R10 R6 R6 R'5 L2 R6 R5 R'4 L4 R4 R'6 L3 R4
Note the "L1s" have disappeared, but I've introduced another symbol "R'".
This is a trivial modification, the sort of thing people interested in compression play with all the time (there's something analagous in currently-popular MTF schemes), and almost certainly something that was used before the filing of the patent. Of course, that can be hard to prove.
(all the other stuff with DCTs and the like appears to be DCTs PLUS this one "innovation")
they've done more research than that (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pantent? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is so broad......... (Score:5, Informative)
This patent was filed by Compression Labs. They were members of JPEG from its inception, but were gone by the time I was a member.
My understanding about this, gathered from JPEG members that overlapped with Compression Labs, was that Compression Labs failed to mention that they had filed for a patent that might impact the work of the committee. This was in direct conflict with the rules established by ITU and ISO wrt IP disclosure. They waited until the patent was granted before they informed the committee about it.
Many members at the time felt that Compression Labs had amended their application with information garnered from committee meetings. There was much bad feeling.
Compression Labs announced that they would not attempt to enforce this patent against JPEG applications. They then stopped attending.
This is very similar to RAMBUS's behavior in JEDEC.
This is despicable.