ISO Could Withdraw JPEG Standard 457
McSpew writes "According to The Register, the ISO is prepared to withdraw JPEG as a standard if Forgent Networks continues to assert its patent claims over JPEG's compression algorithm." I'm sure the JPEG committee would still be happy to hear of prior art.
Oh NO!!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Selling feature (Score:2, Funny)
"Our women are 100% patent-free!"
-Matt
Oh, please... (Score:2)
Maybe this would be a way to stop this patent / Intellectual Property nightmare once and for all.
What about patents not applying if the implementation is open source and not-for-profit?
Well, I guess I can keep on dreaming... =(
Re:Oh, please... (Score:4, Interesting)
The only thing that could improve the situation is that the MPAA find that patents are beginning to eat into their profits, and get their pet senators into action
Re:Oh, please... (Score:2)
Re:Oh, please... (Score:3, Interesting)
That remains to be seen.
It is far from clear that a party may legally make a demand for payment on the basis of a spurious IP claim.
The claim that a party has paid $15 million to buy a patent license sounds very fishy to me. It is considerably greater than would normally be paid in that situation.
There is certainly a claim to be fought in the courts. The various manufacturers who have been targetted by begging letters from Forgent are likely to have many legal defenses. It is highly unlikely that a case will be heard before the patent expires in 2004 however.
ISO shouldn't fight fights (Score:2, Insightful)
Wrong approach (Score:2)
The problem is the whole patent system. You don't fight that by overturning a single patent claim: You do it by rigorously applying the existing scheme. If that leads to unacceptable results, that will demonstrate the problem.
Re:Wrong approach (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wrong approach (Score:2)
You make the assumption that when people see the ill-effects of a problem, they know where the problem is coming from (nevermind what a suitable solution is.)
Thats a big, and usually incorrect assumption.
Re:Oh, please... (Score:5, Informative)
Am I the only one who thinks the ISO should stand up and fight the good fight?
It isn't in any way ISO's job to fight patents.
The JPEG people (remember, JPEG is the Joint Photograpphic Experts Group, not just a compression standard) are the ones who will fight the good fight--them and their members. JPEG itself can only do inexpensive things, and probably couldn't force a lawsuit even if they had the money. What they can do is organize their members (who do have money) into working together in the pursuit of evidence that the patent claims are invalid. which is what they are doing [jpeg.org].
What about patents not applying if the implementation is open source and not-for-profit?
There is a relatively new area of law, equitable estopple (spelling? eh, IANAL, so don't need to write it), which covers this. In this situation it more or less says that given that the owners of the patent knew (or should have known) that their tech was being incorporated into a free standard, they should have spoken up then, and can't now. Letting someone incorporate your IP into a standard, and letting them believe that they hadn't, is a no-no. Refusing to let them use it is OK, but you have to speak up quickly.
Additionally, there is the defense of laches, which more generally covers not enforcing a patent for a long time. If, given you had been reasonably diligent, you would have been aware of infringement (or you actually were aware), and you do nothing for a long time (6 years is the standard, more or less by situation), then you forfeit your enforcement rights for past infringement. A quote I saw on it went like "Those who sleep on their rights can't expect to exercise them."
Finally... (Score:2, Insightful)
My proposition (Score:4, Funny)
Re:My proposition (Score:2)
Re:My proposition (Score:2)
This is a Good Thing(tm) (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is a Good Thing(tm) (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is a Good Thing(tm) (Score:5, Insightful)
So no, whining isn't a bad thing, because, if one year down the road our social collective asserts that JPEGs time has come due to the groundword of people expressing dissatisfaction with it now, it will be much easier to move to something else in one fell swoop.
Being a martyr can be useful, but more often its useless. Education takes time, but our actions are far more effective once everybody is on the same page.
Re:This is a Good Thing(tm) (Score:5, Interesting)
Whining is a bad thing, because habitual complaints put the attention of the complainers, not the problem itself. 1,000 posts noting the state of the patent system, corporate greed and a lack of ethics in modern society will not get us royalty-free jpegs, end microsoft's desktop monopoly, cause the RIAA to support P2P, cause the MPAA to support transferable digital video content, allow musicians to get paid, prevent violations of the GPL or give you a way to overclock your Celeron 300 to be faster than a daul Athlon MP 2100+.
On the other hand, discussions about possible solutions for each issue, methods to educate the public about the problem and methods to enact action at a local level can make a difference. Perhaps somebody here works for a corporation of sufficient size and influence to get proper PNG support in the next version of IE. Perhaps somebody here has been thinking about implementing support for another graphics format in mozilla, and might be driven to take that step.
It's impossible to know what could be accomplished if slashdot attempted to direct the energy it spends mindlessly whining at analyzing the problems the community has identified, and analyzing possible solutions.
Whining on slashdot is masturbation, it may be fun but it doesn't change anything. Pretending otherwise is as unrealistic as my hope that this post may inspire a rational discussion as to what the realistic remedies to this situation are, and what the full impact of this situation really is.
After all, perhaps somebody could talk to these folks and get them to license the patent for free to open source software, thus garnering good will, and they could then just milk the PhotoShops and such of the world.
Of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Re:This is a Good Thing(tm) (Score:3, Informative)
First, PNG is no alternative for JPEG since JPEG, being lossy, compresses much better (which is needed for certain applications such as photography).
Second, you cannot expect the whole world to switch away from very widely used protocols/standards each time some company claims to hold some patent.
If anything, this issue shows how bad, dangerous, damaging software patents are. They cause lots of economic damage, and could lead to illogical behaviour (it is illogical to launch an enormous migration effort for such reasons) wasting lots of money and human resources. It is very good that ISO makes a point here. That has nothing to do with a so called slashdot mentality (as if ISO would suffer from such).
Re:This is a Good Thing(tm) (Score:2)
So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not just about your personal preference (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not just about your personal preference (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's not just about your personal preference (Score:2)
*resizes to 1600x1200*
In jpeg format, it's 922KB @ 100% quality (from Photoshop 7)
In PNG (run through PNGCrush with -brute -l 9 -reduce) it's *waits for PNGCrush to finish* 1.72MB
I'd post links to the two samples of the image, but I'd prefer it if my 32KB/s DSL upload weren't raped by
premature? (Score:2, Interesting)
In addition, what is the point of doing it now? AFIK there were legal limits on enforcing your patent after you let people adopt it.
Personally, i have nothing against patents but this does seem rather silly.
libjpeg? Linux distros? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's clear that Forgent is going after companies that develop browsers, sell image editing tools, etc., but on your typical Unix/Linux platform these tools often are "just" linked to libjpeg where the real encoding and decoding is done. In this case might they try to go after anyone whose name appears in the libjpeg sources? Ack!
This could just mean... (Score:2)
Too bad this patent covers the whole spectrum of compressing images by removing redundant data.
Re:This could just mean... (Score:5, Insightful)
A search on patents using "image AND compression" at the US Patent office returned 21314 hits for 1996 through 2002, 6592 from 1991 through 1995, and 3741 from 1986 through 1990. That's a total of 31647 patents in 12 years.
Are you trying to tell me that there is nothing in the Jpeg 2000 specification that couldn't be shoehorned to fit within one of these 31 thousand patents given a sufficiently unscrupulous company and a technically clueless judge???
JP2 is royalty-free (Score:2)
What's t say that some other lawyer isn't going to claim that thay have a patent on one or more of the algorithms used in Jpeg 2000?
The JPEG committee, which is developing the JPEG2000 standard, has issued a call to entities who claim to own patents on technologies necessary to implement JPEG2000 compression to disclose their intellectual property. The companies that have disclosed such patents have agreed to license them to the general public on a royalty-free basis.
In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
Too late. (Score:5, Interesting)
I want this patent invalidated, then the companies that paid money to go after them for fraud.
My camera uses .jpgs... am I personally liable? (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly what happens if the patent is upheld? Am I personally liable? In theory, could Forgent come after me for royalties?
What happens if you buy and use a product that later on turns out to infringe on someone's patent?
Offhand I don't recall any language in any fine print anywhere that says I'm held harmless, it's all the vendor's fault.
Re:My camera uses .jpgs... am I personally liable? (Score:2)
This whole debacle makes me ashamed to be from Texas. We're supposed to be above this sort of horseshit.
No (Score:2)
If you made software which did any work with jpegs, however, then yes... you would be.
The amount of software out there that does this is STAGGGERING... Personally, I just think we should ignore it, tell Forgent to go F*** themselves, and by the time they get around to really suing anybody the patent will have expired. Meanwhile, the big boys that Forgent did manage to get into court can countersue Forgent for fraud, for attempting to enforce patent royalties after over 17 years of it being royalty free.
If they had wanted their money so badly, they should have started enforcing it when they first patented it, not almost 2 decades later. What Forgent is pulling here is bullsh**, and even _they_ probably know it. Ignore it, and it will go away.
Re:No (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't it going to expire soon? (Score:2)
What is it with you PNG fanatics? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, the issue at stake here is not just about whether or not JPGs can or cannot be used; if Forgent gets away with this, the door is open for all other companies to get away with submerging their patents and then springing royalties onto us. GIFs have been taken from us, and now it looks as if JPGs will be taken from us as well, and I don't think that it's a good idea to rely on just one picture format. I'd rather have choice, thanks very much.
Re:What is it with you PNG fanatics? (Score:2)
So, as you said... the argument "just switch to PNG" doesn't work because PNG can't and won't do what JPEG does.
Prior Art For What? (Score:5, Interesting)
One would hope they'd just fight this nusance lawsuit in court.
Re:Prior Art For What? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Prior Art For What? (Score:2)
ANIM5 and AMIN7 were a Delta-based format - storing differences only.
Re:Prior Art For What? (Score:5, Informative)
They're claiming that the lossless table-based huffman coding that JPEG does *after* the DCT and quantization steps is covered by their lossless table-based huffman/RLE coding.
Not that this makes their claim valid--there is likely prior art for such use of Huffman codes, and the original patent holder was a member of JPEG in the late 80's, and therefore obligated to mention their patent then.
Please stop saying that the patent has nothing to do with JPEG. If rather than reading the crappy html claims, you read the full TIFF version, it becomes clear that their patent is somewhat relevant to JPEG. The more interesting stuff in the patent isn't applicable to JPEG, but the lossless transform they use is.
Re:Prior Art For What? (Score:3, Interesting)
Lossless JPEG is a very unusual beast, and didn't get finalized until much later than lossy JPEG. It works according to much different principles.
Lossy JPEG transform the data such that you can easily throw away unimportant parts, and then runs a lossless coder to shrink it. By removing the unimportant parts, you make lossless coding step very efficient. Lossless JPEG tries to predict what the picture will be based off of earlier pixels. Since the predictions are usually close, you can then use fairly few bits to store the difference between the prediction and actuallity, thereby saving space, although not nearly as much as lossy.
The claims verses standard JPEG are shaky. I'd think that the claims verses lossless are much shakier.
Either way, looking for prior art in the form of old JPEGs is a waste of time. The publication of the spec itself would constitute prior art, except that it isn't old enough. And prior to the spec, there were no JPEGs. So no old JPEGs are old enough.
If you do want a replacement for lossless JPEG, JPEG2000 is quite good. In lossy mode it doesn't have nearly the problems with artifacting that JPEG does. Rather than get blocky, images tend to become progressively blurier. It also has a full lossless mode that gets very good compression ratios, and unlike lossless JPEG, is sane.
Infringing only ONE claim will kill you (Score:2)
In order for a patent to apply, all of it's claims must be met.
I wouldn't be so sure. A typical patent contains a plurality of independent claims ("A computer with memory and a first image source...") and a plurality of dependent claims ("The invention of claim 2, where in addition..."). If a device matches an independent claim exactly, it infringes the patent. Dependent claims exist so that if the independent claim is found to be obvious or not novel, the patent owner has additional inventions. In this case, any device that matches a nullified independent claim plus one or more non-nullified claims dependent on that claim infringes the patent.
Re:Prior Art For What? (Score:2)
Re:Prior Art For What? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Prior Art For What? (Score:4, Informative)
Well that may be true, however having had experience of this type of blood sucking weasel facts of that sort do not necessarily do you any good.
Entrust spent $2 million defeating an absolutely crap patent claim by surety. It was so bogus that the prior art for the claim existed in a 1978 MIT Masters Thesis that is extensively referenced (the thesis is credited with inventing the term digital certificate). However it cost Entrust something like $2 million to defend the claim (and Surety paid a similar amount).
The underlying problem here is that not only does the US have a corrupt patent system, but the legal system allows spurious claims to be made that cost imense amounts to defend without risk to the party making the claim.
Nodoby would litigate this type of claim in Europe because the most likely outcome would be that the plaintif would end up paying the costs of the case.
Two decades!? (Score:3, Redundant)
Re:Two decades!? (Score:4, Informative)
That's correct for newer patents--utility patents expire 20 years from the date of the patent application.
Under the older system, however, patents expired 17 years from the date the patent was granted. ISTR that expiry of the JPEG "patent" is covered under that system, rather than the newer one.
Any patent lawyers out there? (Score:2)
If a patent doesn't specifically mention a process in the list of claims, but the process is described in the patent, does the patent cover that process?
The "JPEG patent" doesn't list the JPEG method, nor does it list a technical description of the method in the list of claims. It does describe the JPEG algorithm in the body of the patent. Does the patent cover the JPEG algorithm?
Re:Any patent lawyers out there? (Score:2, Informative)
Emulating National Lampoon? (Score:2)
(photo of revolver up against dog's head) If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog!
ISO irrelevant? (Score:2, Interesting)
For line-art, vectors, and indexed-color graphics, png, gif [bleh], or svg should already be used, but JPEG is in wide use, and there isn't a replacement for lossy compression.
Slashdot poll time: Will people(companies) 1) pay attention to ISO 2) develop a new format 3) be a conscientous objector 4) move with CowbowNeal to a country without software patents?
Ironically, our saving grace may come from Microsoft, as they have the employees and the browser to implement any standard they want. They could develop a royalty-free lossy compression format, submit it to ISO/ECMA for certification, and put it in the next IE patch/upgrade within half a year.
Does this mean we have to switch to PNG? (Score:2)
-F-
I appreciate the patent uproar...but...? (Score:2)
I've got thousands of digital camera images on my server. What am I going to convert them into? (the ones that aren't in the RAW format of my camera)
I'm trying to see something else to use, but JPG is so prolific it's rather hard to find anything that won't cost me somewhere else.
Any suggestions would be helpful
DjVu (Score:4, Informative)
Fuck em (Score:2)
They're claims are worthless, due to the fact that: (1) they had nothing what-so-ever to do with JPEG; (2) There is prior art.
Aside from that, litigation takes a while. In 2004, these patents expire. Odds are, there's no way in hell they are going to be able to go after a significant number of entities in this 2-year period and win cases. Cases alone can take 2-years.
This is just a desperate money-grabbing attempt. Besides, what court is going to grant them a patent on JPEG? That'd mean that the entire US government -- including the judicial branch -- would have been infringing on this JPEG patents and would owe billions of dollars to this shitless company.
like it or not, JPG support is important (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:like it or not, JPG support is important (Score:2)
JPG cannot reasonably be replaced with a lossless format. The reason for using JPG in the first place is because it compresses BETTER than any lossless format. And if you _want_ a lossless format, you can use PNG.
Patent Priveleges (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically, this is like someone patenting a water powered car, then letting everyone build there own because they don't have the money to have a manufacturing facility, and then 5 years later when everyone and their brother is driving a water powered car, you come out and say "ok, now you all owe me 10%". It's ridiculous, and criminal.
Re:Patent Priveleges (Score:2, Informative)
That's already there. The law on patents is that if you don't act to enforce the patent for a sufficient period of time, the patent becomes unenforceable. The problem is, you still have to let the patent-holder take you to court and have the judge rule that the patent hasn't been enforced and is unenforceable. What we need is a way to short-circuit that, a set of conditions that a user of a technology can satisfy that guarantee no case can be brought against them.
Re:Patent Priveleges (Score:2)
yet another example of how bad it is to let the home team make the rules as you play the game...
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Patent Priveleges (Score:2)
What Forgent's doing has little to do with due process, and much to do with ambush and highway robbery. I'd say conditions like these are appropriate:
- If a technology was outlined in an openly-published standard at the time the patent was granted, the patent is unenforceable against implementations of the standard.
- If the technology has been described in an openly-published and implemented standard, and that standard has been in use for at least 2 years without objections or other action by the patent-holder against the standard or the implementations, the patent is unenforceable against implementations of that standard.
That would scuttle claims like Forgent's without harming people who held patents before a standard was published and who raised objections promptly.Re: (Score:2)
Re:Patent Priveleges (Score:3, Interesting)
If what you are saying is true then there could be no such thing as "submarine" or "submerged" patents, which is what is going on here. The patent is 17 years old and just now Forgent (new owners of said patent) are wanting royalties from everyone using it. This tactic is being used more frequently by businesses (see any article on the RAMBUS debacle).
Patents do not become invalid due to lack of enforcement. Patent holders don't have to do anything to protect their patents. By law it is 100% the responsibility of inventors to make sure their inventions are not infringing on other's patents. All the patent holder has to do is look for infringements and either work out a licensing agreement with the offender or sue them.
I'm not advocating the system, as I personally feel the trademark law of owner-enforcement requirements to be much better. I'm just pointing out that your statement isn't correct.
I know that there is some law... (Score:2)
You don't actually have to be successful at stoping them, you can even just put up a sign that says "no trespassing" and that will maintain your right to introduce more stringent enforcement later.
A similar law but badly implemented law (at least i presume the same law doesn't cover both cases) is what results in authors habitually telling fans "no" when they ask about doing fanfiction, even if the author doesn't mind that particular person writing that particular fanfic. Allowing some fans to write fanfiction can (stupidly) cause them to lose some legal control over their work.
The ideal behind both being that you should not be able to "fool" the public (either intentionally or unintentionally) into believing they have free right to something, and then suddenly start restricting or charging them once the object in question has been taken for granted/come into standard use/whatever is appropriate for the object in question.
I would think that this is exactly the situation such laws were trying to prevent, and i wonder if any of them apply.
My new patent (Abstract) (Score:3, Funny)
Abstract
The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for processing patents to remove redundant information thereby making the patents more suitable for transfer and storage through a limited-bandwidth medium. The present invention specifically relates to methods and apparatus useful in intellectual property systems. Typically, the system determines differences between the current input patents and the previous input patents using mean-square difference of the patents. These mean-square of the patents are processed and compared with one or more thresholds of redundency for determining one of several modes of operation. After processing in some mode, the sucessfully processed patents are in the form of digital numbers and these digital numbers are coded, using ordered redundancy coding, and stored in the database.
SD
Ha! (Score:2)
Does anyone find it strange.... (Score:2)
Hmmm?
Gordon Matthews dies [cconvergence.com]
Forgent runs a potential antitrust risk (Score:4, Informative)
They run the risk of running afoul of US antitrust laws. In the famous US v. United Shoe Manufacturing Company case (1941), the courts ruled that patents cannot be used to stifle competition--of which the Forgent patent may just do. This is the same issue that resulted in Rambus running afoul of the law because Rambus was using its patents on DDR-SDRAM to stifle DDR-SDRAM in favor of RDRAM technology.
'twas a dark and stormy night... (Score:2)
RMS is still not relaxed however. He knows the Achilles heel of his plan to free the hearts and minds of all thinking beings in the world is patents. Restlessly, he searches for an answer, but as yet, it has eluded him. Later that day, one of his minions shows up and senses something is on his master's mind.
Minion0: What is wrong, master? Has someone threatened freedom again?
RMS: Rest easy young minion. Today, at least the battle has been won, but I fear the war may still be lost.
Minion0: You can't mean...
RMS: No, no, my facade as a badly-dressed over-zealous hippie will not be breeched. Be assured that it is inconcievable for anyone to see past my BO.
Minion0: Phew. But yet, I sense something's amiss.
RMS: Patents may yet be our downfall. The dark forces has threatened us before with them, and soon they will again.
Minion0: But, cannot we impress upon the minds of our leaders the importance of this?
RMS: Alas, in that respect our actions will be in vain. Our only chance lies with being more wise than them.
Minion0: I was worried there for a moment... here, let me get the champagne!
RMS: Perhaps it is good that we rejoice in our small victory. But the lull will not last and yet...
Minion0: And yet?
RMS: The time is not yet ripe. Rest assured, this patent war, we shall win!
And so, after a brief victory celebration, the GNU people return to their secret identities of coders who are brilliant, yet in need of basic hygiene.
Yet RMS continues to plan, in the dark and twisting corners of his mind.
We rejoin RMS on April 1 2001, in the boardroom of a relatively unknown company named VTEL. The board members of this struggling company wonder what the darkly dressed stranger has to say.
RMS: My plan is nearly complete. One this is done, you will not only have saved freedom from certain doom, but have struck a terrible blow at the very heart of the dark forces opposing us.
Boardmember0: But, would this not cause us to become unpopular and even shunned by our families?
Boardmember1: And what if there are complications?
RMS: All of the above has been taken care off... My
Minion0: Naturally, you will never see me or RMS again after this meeting.
RMS: And so, we have prepared new identities in any country of your choice for you and your loved ones. We chose your company because it would make the least impact on your social lives.
Boardmember0: But this name change? Would it not raise questions to the observer?
RMS: Only to those who are free from the dark influences. Fortunately for us, our counterparts are oft blinded by the smell of money...
And so, we reach our present day. The dominoes of fate are all in place, and we can only hope that freedom will prevail!
Just Say No (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a GOOD THING! Seriously! (Score:2, Interesting)
This jpeg patent deal is like a storm. Sure it makes a hell of a mess but, when it's over, the world is fresh and new.
All you open-source types should realize the value of Forgent doing this!
This will pave the way for more mainstream people saying, "Hey! Wait a minute! I'm not going to get caught with my pants down again! You know, 'Fool me once...' So I'M switching to open-source software with appropriate licensing to guarantee that these scoundrels can't screw me again!"
In other words, situations like this and with Microsoft claiming patent rights on OpenGL will only encourage people to stay away from propriety, corporate-sponsored software and move to open, community-sponsored software that much faster!
Hip hip hooray for Forgent! They're scheming slimy dirtballs but sometimes those people, in their greed and lust for power and money, accidentally do something that'll just screw their own kind in the long run.
Won't this just push us to PNG? (Score:2)
Also isn't there an open JPEG2000 standard coming out soon?
DVD??? (Score:2)
Oct. 6, 1987: The US Patent Office awards San Jose, Calif.-based Compression Labs Inc. a patent for a technology that simplifies coding for digital images.
This is the best explaination I have found for Forgent's patent. It seems to me to cover any lossy image compression. Including DVD.
I would be interested in seeing if Hollywood grabs the ankles for these bottom feeders. We'll know how confident Forgent is in thier claims by seeing who they go after for money. If the shake down starts with small companies and open source, we'll know these guys have no confidence in the patent.
This will be settled in the courts ;) (Score:5, Funny)
While that is going on. Forgent will sue Unisys for not paying any royalties on the
When the lawyers have taken all of their money, both of them will declare bankruptcy and go out of business.
Hmmm... (Score:2)
Who is Forgent anyway? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Do they do anything besides extort for patents?
Does anybody know anybody who has contracts with Forgent? Does anybody have influence over that? If so, they need to be dropped.
The governments are slow to respond. This patent nonsense is ridiculous. What needs to start happening is "takedowns". A company like Forgent comes out of nowhere and demands royalty payments on something which has been in widespread use for a very long time on the assumption it was not so legally encumbered. This company never even contributed to the algorithm in the first place, so the argument that it's "fair recompence for fair work" is obviously bogus; it's nothing more than extortion which is legal under laws that are out of date. That company then needs to get spanked, and hard, and pubically. They need to suffer bigtime for their arrogance and their mistake. Everybody else needs to see them suffer, so that they will think twice before trying the same bullshit trick.
Anybody who is giving money to Forgent now needs to stop. Companies and individuals, or whoever Forgent currently makes money off, needs to boycott them, cancel their contracts. Forgent needs to go out of business, and it needs to be public and messy. We can't sit back and take it every time some piss-ant little technology-wannabe firm (a category in which I'd include Unisys nowadays) comes forward and starts claiming violation of "their" intellectual property. Somebody somehow has got to start putting these people in their place.
These parasites on society create nothing but grief; they do all sorts of damage to the community at large, getting rich themselves. It's no better than the behavior of the execs at Enron, it just happens to be legal. The system needs to be reformed; I wish our government would see their way through to doing that, but I don't have much hope. (Hell, our government is too busy going in the other direction with things like the DMCA, TIPS, and everything else that makes us so happy.).
The wrong way of doing business. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometimes I don't get our economy. Although I understand that companies want to make money and profit from their products or services, I don't get why some companies are at the public's throat most of the time. Don't the executives get that by making the public angry they're not doing any good to the company's reputation? Do they really expect me to buy anything that involves a JPEG algorithm after a scandal that they put on? If everybody starts pushing for patents and enourmous fees nobody will be willing to do any business, because nobody wants to be sued. I have nothing against patens, they're cool, they can profit an inventor to a reasonable degree and benefit the public at the same time. The companies that hold patents, should be proud of them and open them up to the public, after all that everybody will benefit from whatever they invent and chances are that they're going to make more money than buy suing each other.
Timeline, information, conclusions (Score:5, Informative)
TIMELINE
1986 - Patent filed, Oct 27, Compression Labs, Inc., San Jose, CA
1987 - Patent granted, Oct 6
1992 - JPEG standardized ITU-T Rec. T.81 (1992)
1994 - JPEG standardized ISO/IEC 10918-1:1994
1994 - GATT ammended ("Ururguay Round"), Dec 9
1995 - GATT changes to U.S. patent law go into effect, Jun 7
1997 - Patent acquired by Forgent Networks
2002 - Patent enforced by Forgent Networks
INFORMATION
People have criticised Forgent Networks for not speaking up about the patent during participation in ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1, Sub Committee 29, Working Group 1. In fact, Forgent did not have the patent at the time.
The patent was granted prior to the GATT-mandated U.S. patent law changes to eliminate submerged patents. Thus the term of the patent is 17 years; therefore the patent expires on Oct 6, 2004, not "in 2006, 20 years from the filing date", as people have been claiming.
It is not the proper role of the ISO to take up a legal battle against patents.
CONCLUSIONS
Forgent was probably unaware of the patent at the time of its participation in the JPEG working group.
Prosecuting the patent after allowing the continued existance for 5 years of an international standard based on the patent is likely a violation of the RICO statutes.
Specifically, USC Title 18, Part I, Chapter 96, Section 1961(1)(A) and 1961(1)(B), "Extortion".
The definition of "Extortion in this case is from USC Title 18, Part I, Chapter 95, Section 1951(b)(2); specifically: (emphasis mine).
It seems pretty clear to me that this falls into the same category as the civil application of RICO to the RAMBUS patents, and to similar recent cases.
So, IMO, rather than expecting the ISO to get into the act, it's more likely time to involve your local Federal prosecutor, instead.
-- Terry
The scary thing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Grrr. (Score:2, Insightful)
Since this is the Register, after all..... (Score:3, Funny)
They're kinda like the Weekly World News [weeklyworldnews.com] of technology. You know, the people who brought us BatBoy?
Re:Since this is the Register, after all..... (Score:5, Informative)
They do not, however, fabricate news. When they report on rumors and venture forth theories and conjecture, they phrase it clearly as such. That places them quite a bit ahead of other tech news sources such as CNet and ZD. They also have the very good online journalistic habit of quoting or linking to the entire original source without editing it down. While editing down the original makes sense for a print publication, online publications have no real reason to.
--
Evan
Re:PNG (Score:2, Redundant)
JPEG is a lossy algorithm, which gets rid of "unnoticeable" parts of the image, in order to lower the file size.
PNG, on the other hand, is a lossless algorithm, which, when decompressed, gives you byte-for-byte the original image.
If we lose PNG, we can come up with something else. Good lossless algorithms abound. But, AFAIK, there aren't that many GOOD replacements for JPEG.
Re:PNG (Score:3, Interesting)
What if PNG is challenged - will your viewpoint stand?
Over the last few years thousands of patents have been granted, the bulk of which probably shouldn't have - especially in software that has such a massive worldwide explosion in new "inventions" which the orignal authors have not patented - then 10 or 20 years later someone patents it.
The patent office (who make their money from granting patents) don't have the time or the inclination to do a full search - especially when most of the source is hidden from view - it's not just book publishing or visible inventions that need to be searched. But of course, that is an impossible task (and probably breaking a few license agreements plus the DCMA to boot).
So what will this do? Well, the file formats will be published by big corporations who have a large portfolio to challenge other companies. Other people will not be able to risk publishing their formats or their source code. So the world loses - and that includes corporations who are just too blind to see it yet.
Is this really the intention of IP laws? I don't think so.
Regards
Rob Probin
Re:PNG (Score:2, Interesting)
There's nothing to adequately replace JPEG (Score:3, Informative)
OK, I'll take the bait, since I'm qualified to respond. I'm credited on the PNG specification as a contributor, and I wrote one of the first (if not the first) commercial implementations of PNG, for a little company called Mastersoft that eventually got acquired by Adobe (via Frame Technologies). Your facts are half-right -- PNG does give better image quality by virtue of supporting up to 16 bits per channel (16 bits each of R, G, B, and optionally A), and by virtue of using lossless compression, but it does not give better compression in the general case.
JPEG is designed to use lossy compression, and as such, it can attain much tighter compression ratios than PNG can. In some cases, PNG can generate a smaller file than JPEG, but this is a corner case where the original image has a limited color space (e.g., uses indexed color with very few unique colors), and where the original image has abrupt transitions (e.g., line art, or art where regions are solidly colored). JPEG is designed to work well on photographic images, where continuous tones are the norm.
If we lose JPEG as an open standard, there isn't anything left to adequately replace it. PNG was supposed to replace GIF to get around the Unisys patent (GIF tax). JPEG2000 is too new, and there are too few software packages supporting it. JPEG2000 also requires the use of wavelets, and a lot of legacy hardware might be severely taxed processing these new images.
.jpg will not die (Score:2, Insightful)
Though by all means I'd love to see someone try to sue Microsoft because of Internet Explorer. Just like smokers trying to sue the tobacco industry: wait the plaintiff out until he/she pases on from the cause of the lawsuit. 15 million is way more than the 2-3mil corporate lawyers would make off the case.
-Matt
Re:There goes the show kids... (Score:2)
Do you think ISO not recognizing it is gonna cause millions of web masters to take them down, or stop millions of browsers from seeing them ? This is silly hot air and rhetoric by the ISO. It is like saying they are gonna revoke the standard on the wheel and expect everyone to stop using it....
Re:ridiculous (Score:2)
Your argument misses the point (Score:2)
On the other hand, it's ALSO currently a "de jure" standard, which is to say it has the "seal of approval" of a standards body, in this case, ISO.
There is a difference, and it has a lot to do with how standards bodies work and how governments relate to them.
Re:ridiculous (Score:2)
You seem to be operating under the more general definition, which is often phrased as "de facto standard" meaning "standard from the fact."
The other, more strict, usage is a formal standard published by a standards body. HTML 4.0 and JPEG are this type of "standard." (In addition to being the other kind.)
ISO is a standards body, and can most certainly retract a standard that they published in the first place.
Now, as to your qalitative analysis of ISO (and by implication, other standards bodies) I have to disagree with your assessment. I think that technical merit, to included social/legal difficulties with implementation, is exactly what ISO and friends should be doing. Getting behind the de facto "standard" of the month without regard to technical merit would be a total waste of time.
Furthermore, I think you belittle their true contribution when you intimate that they are only a "cheerleading group." Interoperation doesn't happen by magic. Without a published standard JPEG wouldn't be so universally interoperable (witness
-Peter
Except for one thing... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:US only? (Score:3, Interesting)
What is MS's stance on this for IE? Did they pay for a license?
What about Mozilla? Are they going to pay for a license?
Re:Patent not defended by prior owner = PUBLIC DOM (Score:2, Informative)
Ummm.. (Score:2)
If a standard is encumbered by patents, unless they are available on RAND terms, then it cannot be an official standard.
This is not them speaking out against anything, they are simply stating what they must do.
Re:Does it matter much anyways?? (Score:3, Insightful)