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JPEG Patent Could Impact The Gimp 301

Posted by timothy from the notacon-falls-silent dept.
SeanAhern writes "A number of years ago, Forgent acquired a patent on some of the algorithms required for JPEG compression and decompression, and recently sued 31 big-name IHVs and ISVs. A Newsforge article gets into some of the details and asks whether open source tools like the Gimp could be liable as well. To add fuel to the fire, the Joint Photographic Experts Group's committee thinks that some of the patent may be invalid. The p2pnet.net story mentions that the FTC has some skepticism as well. We originally talked about this on Slashdot back in the summer of 2002."
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JPEG Patent Could Impact The Gimp More

JPEG Patent Could Impact The Gimp

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  • gif all over again (Score:3, Interesting)

    by quelrods ( 521005 ) * <quel@@@quelrod...net> on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:05PM (#8959923) Homepage
    UGH...someone write a count down for the ~2 years left before jpg's are free of patents. Getting parts or all of it invalidated due to prior art would be nice, but I won't hold my breath on that one.
    • The goatse guy was a jpeg. Not sure if its art tho.

    • Re:gif all over again (Score:5, Informative)

      by dougmc ( 70836 ) <dougmc+slashdot@frenzied.us> on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:30PM (#8960080) Homepage
      gif all over again
      ... except that the LZW patent was valid, as far as I know. It's not nice that they said they would not pursue the patent and then changed their mind, but that's beside the fact.

      And .gif already had a replacement that was superior in most ways -- .png. The only problems with .pngs are 1) not everything supported them at the time (but now most things do) and 2) it didn't support animated pictures like gifs do. (But I think mpng does, but nobody uses it.)

      The jpeg patent, from what I can tell, ignores the prior art that was out there when it was filed, and so that makes it invalid (but that needs to be proven in court, of course.) That, and there really isn't anything out there that's really ready to replace jpeg.

      Beyond all those import things that are different, sure, it's gif all over again :)

      • Except JPeg2000 of course - Its a great format - and I think it was royalty cleared by the JPEG group

      • Re:gif all over again (Score:3, Interesting)

        by hak1du ( 761835 )
        except that the LZW patent was valid, as far as I know.

        Both LZW and this patent are "valid" patents. Both of them had extensive related prior art at the time of their filing, although the exact method described in each patent may not have been patented before. In both cases, the only reason the patents became valuable was because the companies involved remained silent for a long time, until the patented method had become an integral part of some standard that was erroneously presumed open and freely imp

  • This is a very bad trend (Score:5, Interesting)

    by metlin ( 258108 ) * on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:05PM (#8959924) Journal
    From the article --


    NF: Would a free software program that stores images in JPG format, like the GIMP, be violating your IP rights by using JPG?

    Noonan: That's a difficult question, I don't have the answer to that. I have to defer that to our legal team.
    Of course, just to be safe, it might be wise for the GIMP developers (as well as all other open source image processing projects which use JPG) to volunteer to donate a percentage of their revenues to Forgent Networks.


    WTF?! What revenues? The developers are getting donations and the like for the contributions they are making by working for free. This is plain ridiculous, people are putting in their free time to help develop software that will benefit everyone, and giving it away for free.

    And jackasses like this want a piece of the pie? What about the good old days when knowledge belonged to the world, and people put out their works for everyone else to use?

    Yet another reasons how patents are blatantly misused. First of all, its not even sure if they have the rights that they claim to have. At the very least, they could have spared non-commercial entities.

    Stuff like this gets me worked up to no end.

    The statement notes that at least two other companies (Philips and Lucent) are similarly claiming to have patents that relate to portions of the original JPEG standard, and expresses disappointment that some organisations are trying to cash in on what was developed to be a license and royalty-free standard.

    And what has been contributed by the OpenSource community to benefit everyone else, is being made useless by pointless litigations.

    Remember kids - We now live in an era where giving away knowledge and helping people is WRONG! You need to be greedy, patent all your stuff, sue your Mom and kill your neighbour's dog is RIGHT.

    • Re:This is a very bad trend (Score:5, Funny)

      by pewterfish ( 766491 ) <dev.glasshalfempty@co@uk> on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:09PM (#8959953) Homepage Journal
      WTF?! What revenues? The developers are getting donations and the like for the contributions they are making by working for free. This is plain ridiculous, people are putting in their free time to help develop software that will benefit everyone, and giving it away for free.

      So yeah, the GIMP should donate a percentage of their revenues. 15% of 0 is still 0 :)

    • Re:This is a very bad trend (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Halo1 ( 136547 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:11PM (#8959970)
      Actually, they simply refuse to give licenses to small companies altogether, just read this message [aful.org]. As a litigation company, it costs them more to negotiate a license with a small company than what they could make from it, so they don't. It's completely independent from open source or not...
      • So simply don't ask for a license. Go about our merry way and wait to be put on notice. Since your revenues are zero and their patent is about to expire I don't think there's much to be concerned about (and that assumes their claims can withstand scrutiny to begin with).
        • Unfortunately if by some small miracle the patent is valid, the would probably still be liable for infringement during the time the patent existed. If you do 50 in a 40 and get a ticket, you don't somehow get off if the speed limit on the road is raised to 55 AFTER you got got speeding.
          Unless the patent laws work different than other laws, I assume what would matter is if they infringed during the lifetime of the patent. Hopefully the prior art claims pan out.

          Personaly I think patents on softwar

    • By all means.... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Seraphim_72 ( 622457 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:20PM (#8960021)

      Lets see here, the Gimp's profit is $0, so lets be generous and give them, oh, say a full 20%. So lets see -

      0 * .2 = 0

      Would you like that in Check, Cash or PayPal?

    • Re:This is a very bad trend (Score:4, Insightful)

      by frdmfghtr ( 603968 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:27PM (#8960063)
      NF: Would a free software program that stores images in JPG format, like the GIMP, be violating your IP rights by using JPG?

      Noonan: That's a difficult question, I don't have the answer to that. I have to defer that to our legal team.
      Of course, just to be safe, it might be wise for the GIMP developers (as well as all other open source image processing projects which use JPG) to volunteer to donate a percentage of their revenues to Forgent Networks.

      Interpretation: "Of course, if you were to give us some of your revenues, we'd be more inclined to leave you alone." Sounds like an implied threat to me for protection money.

    • Re:This is a very bad trend (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:31PM (#8960088) Journal
      And jackasses like this want a piece of the pie? What about the good old days when knowledge belonged to the world, and people put out their works for everyone else to use?

      Welcome to 2004.

      Knowledge today is nothing more then a simple object of value. Patents, IP, and the whole are used as sleeper agents lately. You patent something extremely broad today and in 10 years, you fuck up everyone by sueing people left and right. That's normal these days and basically not much to worry about. After all, the big companies in IT at the moment got in their current position by other means. Google by sheer usefulness, IBM by overpowering all mainframe competition over time, Microsoft by succesfully ripping of good ideas, etc. If you look at the Fortune 500 list, who in that list made and kept his fortune by starting silly lawsuits? ( lawyers dont start lawsuits, they just porfit from them. Immensely. )

      • Just for the record, Microsoft did not grow big because of ripping off good ideas, but because IBM made the PC the MS-platform and Asian manufacturers made cheap hardware for the PC.

    • Re:This is a very bad trend (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JordanH ( 75307 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:41PM (#8960151) Homepage Journal
      IANAL, but I think any GIMP developer who did 'volunteer to donate a percentage of' anything might lose their right to distribute the GIMP under the GPL.

      From the GPL [fsf.org]:

      7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

      Note the phrase "conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise)..."

      By agreeing to "donate" to a patent holder, you might be endangering your rights to distribute under the GPL.

    • Re:This is a very bad trend (Score:5, Informative)

      by spiritraveller ( 641174 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:46PM (#8960176)
      Actually, the Newsforge page looks more like this:

      NF: Would a free software program that stores images in JPG format, like the GIMP, be violating your IP rights by using JPG?

      Noonan: That's a difficult question, I don't have the answer to that. I have to defer that to our legal team.

      Of course, just to be safe, it might be wise for the GIMP developers (as well as all other open source image processing projects which use JPG) to volunteer to donate a percentage of their revenues to Forgent Networks.

      This was placed at the end of the interview.

      My impression is that these were not Noonan's words, but the closing statement of the interviewer... a writer for an open source oriented web site, who obviously has a sense of humor about the issue...

    • Re:This is a very bad trend (Score:5, Informative)

      by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:58PM (#8960228) Journal
      What about the good old days when knowledge belonged to the world, and people put out their works for everyone else to use?


      You know the good ole days weren't always good
      And tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems
      -Billy Joel


      Those "good old days" were the days when your parents worked their asses off to provide stuff for you to use.

      Patent disputes have been going on as long as there have been patents - Hollywood was founded in California because IP law wasn't strictly enforced in California, (like it was in New York) and so the MPAA could get around patents on the film camera. [wired.com]

      • Re:This is a very bad trend (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Bastian ( 66383 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @05:21PM (#8961079)
        I think this Hollywood story is a great example of how wrongheaded a lot of IP law is. Historically places with heavy restrictions on the freedom of information (like, say, the Soviet Union) have fallen behind other areas in economic productivity and quality of life. Whatever new technology someone is trying to control in a restrictive place just pops up somewhere else where those restrictions aren't as strong, as in the Hollywood case.

        I believe the issue here is that in the long run monopoly is always bad for an economy. I realize that patents, copyrights, etc. are necessary to give inventors and innovators some incentive to put new products on the market, especially in the case of small inventors who would simply be gobbled up as soon as their bigger larger competitors reverse engineered their product (or co-opted their ideas in the case of copyright law.)

        However, the point is to give just enough time that you promote innovation but not too much time so you don't stifle competition (in the case of patents) or cultural history (in the case of copyright). It's important to realize that the length of time that is appropriate here varies wildly from industry to industry. In the case of software patents (we'll assume for the moment that they aren't a stupid idea in the first place), for example, the industry moves so quickly that a patent shouldn't last any longer than two years. That's plenty of time for a piece of software to grab a niche in the market. It's also a good way to avoid stealth patents like this JPEG one. 20 years for something like an image compression algorithm is just ridiculous.

        In the old days, folks could easily have gotten around this by just moving to a country where you can't patent something like a compression algorithm and continue to make improvements in signal compression technology. At the same time, the country that did allow that patent would suddenly find itself falling behind in the technology world because it enforces laws that stifle innovation.

        Nowadays, the big countries are trying to escape this problem not by creating legal environments that encourage having an intelligent, innovative population but by trying to force their Faustian bargain on the whole world through international trade laws (which is how the USA got the DMCA). Which is sad - instead of saying, "hey, everyone else out there is growing really fast, maybe we should grow really fast, too", the western world has decreed that the entire species must grow slowly.

        And the thing that gets me most of all is that the whole IP thing is so similar to a classic prisoner's dilemma that I can't believe it isn't more painfully obvious to people. Then again, maybe it is, and it's just that the people who get to make decisions about IP law aren't interested in being better off in an objective sense; they're just interested in making sure they will always do better than everyone below them.
        • There's a delicate balance between rewarding innovation and stifling it. I believe that in recent years, advancement in research and especially the broadning of IP law have largely tipped that balance too far. The key issue with patents is process patents - once you let patents be granted on abstract concepts, you opened the door for all kinds of crap, including submarine patants like these. Basically, every new industry now has to deal with loads of patents filed, without an actual invention, by scumbags t

    • Yet another reasons how patents are blatantly misused. First of all, its not even sure if they have the rights that they claim to have. At the very least, they could have spared non-commercial entities.

      You can thank big government and big business in the USA for that : ) Not to mention the lack of a real democracy where we have more then two parties to vote for. Think about it. When was the last time we had more then one rich white republican vs one rich white democrat running for president? And no, th

  • Will there be a www.BurnAllJPGs.com?
    • The Forgent JPEG patent issue is mentioned on burnallgifs.org: "Yes, but it wouldn't stand up in court, so ignore Forgent."

      With a link to a July/2002 message [aful.org] by Greg Aharonian.

    • Re:The real question is... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I knew I read somewhere that there was an unenforcible patent on jpeg. I thought it might have been fsf.org but it turned out to be burnallgifs.org [burnallgifs.org]

      Q: Forgent claims to hold a patent that covers JPEG, right?
      A: Yes, but it wouldn't stand up in court, so ignore Forgent. "This JPEG patent will neither stand the test of time or the scrutiny of some good patent litigators. Any concerns are much ado about nothing." -- Greg Aharonian

  • Abolish patents. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Thinkit4 ( 745166 ) *
    Then the gimp wouldn't have a problem.

    • Re:Abolish patents. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Rikus ( 765448 )
      Absolutely. When patents are doing nothing but preventing a good (or in the case of jpeg, fair) technology from being fully utilized, they are complety useless. I would argue that they are useless anyway, but this is just ridiculous.
      It doesn't make sense for one person or group of people to have control over some process, operation, or method. Copyrights are a bit closer to being reasonable, but patents just give away power that should never be had in the first place.

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by KingOfBLASH ( 620432 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:06PM (#8959934) Journal
    Forgent receives financing deal from Baystar in order to pursue IP claims.

  • Still applicable? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The Original Yama ( 454111 ) <lists@sridhar.dhanapalan@com> on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:06PM (#8959935) Homepage
    The patent was applied for ages ago, and I think it expires later this year. Why would any court accept the claims of this company when they never defended their patent in the past?

    • Re:Still applicable? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Doctor7 ( 669966 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:10PM (#8959960)
      Because it wasn't their patent in the past. They bought the company that owned it; the original company wanted to leave the standard alone and not enforce the patent. The current owners don't have the same opinion and there's nothing in the transfer of patents that forces them to respect the original owners' wishes.

      • Re:Still applicable? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by moviepig.com ( 745183 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:37PM (#8960135)
        ...the original company wanted to leave the standard alone and not enforce the patent. The current owners don't...

        If the original owners let the patent "leak" into the public domain (effectively, per the Doctrine of Laches), then such would be the condition of the patent as purchased by the new company. The patent's virginity wouldn't reinstate any more than Britney's.

        (But IANAL, dammit.)

        • Not necessarily true. The Doctrine of Laches relies on demonstrating negligence on the part of the patent holder, and is unlikely to be held against a new owner.
          • The Doctrine of Laches relies on demonstrating negligence on the part of the patent holder, and is unlikely to be held against a new owner.

            Here, the original owner was (deliberately) negligent, and thereby lost any right to sue. Thus, since they no longer have that right, they can't sell it to a new owner.

            To me, this point seems incontrovertible ...though I know too well that even the simplest logic doesn't always prevail in court.

    • Because they are under absolutely no obligation to defend their patent unless they want to. As long as it is still valid, they can choose to enfore it at their will.

      Patents don't require enforcement like trademarks do.

    • Laches? (Score:4, Informative)

      by taped2thedesk ( 614051 ) * on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:24PM (#8960049)
      Why would any court accept the claims of this company when they never defended their patent in the past?

      Well, generally past enforcement patterns (i.e. non-enforcement and selective enforcement) has nothing to do with the patent rights. AFAIK, if you've paid the patent fees, it's still your patent and you can still sue over infringment. This is unlike trademarks, where all sorts of things can affect the validity of your trademark (for example, if a trademark holder users their mark as a verb rather than a proper noun, it might not stand up in court).

      However, there is the legal concept of laches [reference.com], which MIGHT provide protection against past damages. If it applied to patents, then if a company was aware of a particular infringment, showed negligance by failing to enforce their patent (i.e. sue the infringer), then comes back much later and decides to sue, the infringer couldn't be held responsible for past damages (although they could still be ordered to stop infringing, etc.). This is all in theory though, I'm not sure if this has been tested in court with regard to patents. And IANAL.

      If anyone knows more about this, feel free to enlighten me.

  • Personally... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ..Does it entirely matter if we lose JPEG? If we have so many filters to remove the crappy artifacts left behind from JPEG, and such great formats that are worth fighting for, like PNG, if they were to come under patent, it makes you wonder...

    • Yes, it matters. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by zCyl ( 14362 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:20PM (#8960014)
      Does it entirely matter if we lose JPEG?

      Yes. Most digital cameras save their pictures as JPEGs. I happen to enjoy being able to use/adjust those pictures under Linux.

    • Re:Personally... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by S.Lemmon ( 147743 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:27PM (#8960066) Homepage
      To all the other dittoheads saying "just use PNG", please learn something or two about the format before you push it.

      Sure it's open source, and that's great, but it was never intended as JPEG replacement! JPEG is a lossy compression and can reduce the size of a photographic image much further than a lossless compression - that's why it was invented to begin with. PNG is intended as a GIF replacement for images like drawings and diagrams that have large areas of the exact same color.

      You might as well say to use TIFF as use PNG - both will store high color images with perfect quality, but they'll be huge compared to JPEG. Bandwidth ain't free folks - having images ten times their previous size can sink a busy website. Now, finally some may say "but PNG supports lossy compression too" - yep, it's sure does - by using JPEG compression!

      • Re:Personally... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by xigxag ( 167441 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @03:18PM (#8960336)
        they'll be huge compared to JPEG

        I find that my pngs are about 3x the size of my jpgs.

        On the other hand, I also find that I have vastly more than 3x the disk space, processor speed, and bandwidth than I had back when jpegs were first coming into wide use. So, all things considered, relatively speaking, pngs aren't really huge at all.

        • Re:Personally... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by S.Lemmon ( 147743 )
          What quality levels are you using? What source material? The difference can be much larger than 3x.

          Also it doesn't sound like you've ever hosting a semi-popular website. Look at how many sites get slashdotted to see why conserving bandwidth is VERY important. You really expect sites should just eat the cost of using even 3x their current bandwidth? If so, I'm sure you wouldn't mind paying them for the extra hosting costs - right?

          Hell, if file size was irrelevant, everyone would be using wav files instead

        • Re:Personally... (Score:3, Informative)

          by Mycroft_VIII ( 572950 )
          Only 3x. I'll take guesse here that most of what you store in png format is art/cartoon stuff and not photographic type pictures.
          Png is designed for created images where color values remain fairly constant over sizable chunks of the image, and is designed to be lossless.
          Jpeg on the other hand is designed to deal with photographic images where the colors make small changes changes fairly constantly and have some high contrast areas. It is then compressed in a lossy manner that takes into acount both

      • Re:Personally... (Score:3, Informative)

        by rspress ( 623984 )
        Actually JPEG compression bites the big one and is a compromise of file size and image quality. The reason it is popular is that it was free to use and that made it universal from platform to platform and device to device.

        JPEG was created to save then very expensive memory be it hard disk, chip based such as RAM and Flash RAM and of course data pipelines like modems. For most uses this is fine but for digital cameras where good pictures are always desired lossless compression is the way to go or better yet

  • Oh come on.. stop worrying already. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by k98sven ( 324383 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:10PM (#8959961) Journal
    Number one: Noone seems to think this patent is applicable, we've been over this already. The JPEG group says [jpeg.org] (in diplomatic terms) that they have prior art.

    Number two: What is to be gained by going after the Gimp? Want to becoming the next SCO? Only there is even less money in the Gimp than in Linux.

    • Re:Oh come on.. stop worrying already. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by metlin ( 258108 ) * on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:16PM (#8959992) Journal
      Number two: What is to be gained by going after the Gimp? Want to becoming the next SCO? Only there is even less money in the Gimp than in Linux.

      Nothing. Except that this would set a VERY bad precedent.

      People will start suing works that are OpenSource all over the place citing some vague-o patents that they may not even have claims to, and kill such projects.

      If a conglomerate of litigation happy powerful companies got together, they can cause quite a harm, and fuck things up.

      Its not the fact that they are targeting Gimp *in particular* thats wrong - its the fact that they are targeting anybody at all (okay, anybody OpenSource).
      • The point of the question is what would they have to gain by going after the Gimp.

        They have not explicitly stated that they are going after any open source projects yet.

        They have bought some patents in order to make money by suing people... why would you sue someone who has no money?

        It would be different if they actually had a product. If that were they case, open source would be their competition... but in this case, why should they care about the Gimp?

      • If that were to happen, couldn't the OSS projects effected act only in countries without software patents, and let the ones in facist countries take responsability as a user, but not risk the project as a whole?
  • One might even say that Forgent is going to make the GIMP their gimp. Wakka wakka wakka! - (ducks)

  • Don't worry (be happy) (Score:3, Informative)

    by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt@ner[ ]at.com ['dfl' in gap]> on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:16PM (#8959999) Journal
    I'd say that people should do absolutely nothing.... by the time they even get their lawyers out to go after anyone it will be too late. This patent is mere weeks away from expiration already.

  • Suck (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DarkHelmet ( 120004 ) * <mark.seventhcycle@net> on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:20PM (#8960017) Homepage
    I'm not so worried about The Gimp, since I typically use Photoshop.

    What I AM worried about, is what sort of long-reaching implications this has for GD [boutell.com]. I use GD regularly in order to manipulate images via the web, and something like this would most likely cause JPEG support to be entirely removed from the project until the worldwide patent expires.

    They did it with GIF.

    This sucks, because usually I've come to expect future versions of software to have MORE functionality, not less. I hope the Joint Photographic Experts Group really does have prior art.

    • Re:Suck (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SnakeStu ( 60546 )

      I'm not so worried about The Gimp, since I typically use Photoshop.

      Eh? Whether you're using Photoshop or The Gimp, you're using something potentially affected by this issue. (Photoshop is published by Adobe; Adobe is one of the companies being sued by Forgent.) But as a Photoshop user, you're more likely to pay real dollars from your wallet as a result (if Adobe has to pay licensing fees and passes those costs to users, thus potentially increasing the cost of your next upgrade). I guess your statemen

      • But anyway, you should just be creating PNGs anyway. :-)

        I'll remember that the next time I want an animated graphic... Not that GD *ever* supported animated gifs to begin with. ;)

  • USPTO as a tiny ice cream truck (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The I Shing ( 700142 ) * on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:24PM (#8960043) Journal
    For me, what comes to mind is an image of the USPTO as a small roadside ice cream stand that hands out weapons-grade plutonium.

    At least this company is attacking big companies that can defend themselves. I'm surprised they're not going the PanIP route and going after small companies, settling for miniscule amounts from a large number of defendants. Or would that stragegy backfire?
    • USPTO as a small roadside ice cream stand that hands out weapons-grade plutonium

      They don't hand it out They sell it for money - that is the American Way - Government of the corrupt, by the corrupt, for the corrupt. [and you thought the Russian Mafia was bad]

      If this patent is not valid in the rest of the world, can we just get on with our lives? - No they will hit us with shock and awe. You wonder why Americans are not popular every where they go?

    • I'm surprised they're not going the PanIP route and going after small companies, settling for miniscule amounts from a large number of defendants. Or would that stragegy backfire?

      Nope, they just haven't got the time. The patent expires before long - better to target a few companies with deep pockets and claim fees for the past 10 years than send your lawyers all over the place targetting tiny comanies and running out of time before you've made any real money.

  • Some of this old documentation is screwy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Amiga Lover ( 708890 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:24PM (#8960045)
    Seriously. Half these patent/IP battles with stuff from the 80s/early 90s is crap - companies have some IP they claim is theres, but looking back it's been so diluted over time, pieces sold off, transferred about, and nobody really keeps records of what belongs to who. SCO think they own "unix" but they at the most (barring the novell dispute) own PART of SOME of ONE branch of ONE of the unices. Some of the SysV code is so open and diluted and already released freely that it simply cannot apply, likewise by the look of these jpg patents it's only a MAYBE that forgent own SOME of the jpeg compression stuff.

    Is there not a central registry on who owns what, instead of just an initial record of a patent being granted to company X, and finding out who owns it requires looking through the transitions of different companies as pieces of the IP are sold off over time.

    If everything was kept up to date AS THE SALES HAPPENED it would all be so much easier, no disputes, a nice paper trail of just who owns what.

    I bet some of these patent companies buy up IP in the hope they have something worthwhile, but will never know what they're truly entitled to without it being decided by a court... and since information can be absent there, that can get it wrong

    • Re:Some of this old documentation is screwy (Score:4, Interesting)

      by secondsun ( 195377 ) <secondsun@gmail.com> on Saturday April 24, 2004 @04:09PM (#8960636) Journal
      The effects you are describing happens in land sales frequently. A man with x acres will give his children each an equal share in the x acres instead of splitting the land up. Then these children will borrow money against their share, sell it off, or give it to their children. After 20 - 30 years the shares are all split up and dilluted until someone comes along and forcloses on one share with an outstanding debt and is able to take all of the property. (There is an 8 year perdiod where the forclosure can be challenged but it is hard to succesfully execute after the forclosure is complete and impossible after 20 years). The term for this 8-20 year period is a colored title. (0-8 years I think is a contested title and 20 on is a clear title).

  • Not just the GIMP (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:24PM (#8960047) Homepage Journal
    Most anything would be effected I would imagine.

    But in the end, it will be a lot like the GIF mess a few years back.

    Instead of making a quick buck they pretty much made GIF irrelevant.

    They thought that since it was so ingrained into the graphics world people would just penny up ... proved them wrong..

    Making money on ones inventions is ok, dont get me wrong.. But doing it THIS way just isnt 'right'.

    • Re:Not just the GIMP (Score:3, Informative)

      by spinkham ( 56603 )
      Gif irrelevant?
      There's about 20 of them on the page you currently reading, and it is by far the most common bitmap format on the web... GIF still seems pretty relevant in the world I live in....
  • Of course, just to be safe, it might be wise for the GIMP developers (as well as all other open source image processing projects which use JPG) to volunteer to donate a percentage of their revenues to Forgent Networks.

    Just to be safe... because of course, we wouldn't like something bad to happen to you...
  • what about JPEG2000 (if I look at the name they are probably a bit late)

    Anyone knows about JEPG2000???

    • Re:Ok, JPEG is proprietary, but (Score:4, Informative)

      by canajin56 ( 660655 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:47PM (#8960183)

      JPEG2000 also has patents that cover it. However, the JPEG group claims that they have obtained waivers from all such patent holders, so everything should be OK. The CORE contains 27 patents from 11 companies that have been licenced free of charge to the JPEG group under ISO guidlines, and, as such, can be used freely by anybody implementing the JPEG 2000 part-1 standard.

      However, Part-2 of the standard, which contains several enhancments to the core, does contain a single patent that is not free, but avalible under RAND (Reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms. However, Part-2 is not necessary for JPEG2000 functionality...I'm not sure what exactly Part-2 contains, in fact...

      On the other hand, these exact same guidelines were applied to the JPEG standard. Of course, the JPEG group itself says that the JPEG patent that the article is about isinvalid, as the JPEG standard predates the patent in question.

  • Really his quote? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chris_eineke ( 634570 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:36PM (#8960120) Homepage Journal
    Quote:
    Of course, just to be safe, it might be wise for the GIMP developers (as well as all other open source image processing projects which use JPG) to volunteer to donate a percentage of their revenues to Forgent Networks.

    Is this actually part of that guy's answer? It looks more like a sarcastic remark of the poller.

    Well, at least I hope it is.... :-/

  • Because of this news, I finally got off my @ss and installed the GIMP. I had been using Paint Shop Pro, which is good and all for what I want it for, but it ain't libre. Mozilla, Gaim, and GIMP. Now if I can just kick the Windows habit.

  • Can't take "Gimp" seriously after Pulp Fiction (Score:4, Funny)

    by October_30th ( 531777 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:41PM (#8960152) Homepage Journal
    Zed: Bring out the Gimp.
    Maynard: But the Gimp's sleeping.
    Zed: Well, I guess you better go and wake him up then.

  • Oh, great. (Score:5, Funny)

    by RomulusNR ( 29439 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:42PM (#8960158) Homepage
    So after converting all our GIFs to JPGs in the middle of the 90s, now that the other patent [unisys.com] has expired, we'll be converting all our JPGs back to GIFs.

  • ridiculous patent, but that isn't even the problem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hak1du ( 761835 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:48PM (#8960188) Journal
    The patent is on run-length coding, a widely used idea even in the 1980's, together with lots of trivial variations on the basic idea. The patent shouldn't have been granted--it's just one of many bogus patents.

    However, even more serious is that the company has waited until the last year that the patent is in effect trying to enforce it. Under current regulations, that seems to be possible, but there is no reason why we should not change the laws and regulations.

    We really need to arrive at a legal principle that companies need to actively enforce their patents when they become aware of violations, or otherwise lose patent protection altogether. For something of the size and importance of the JPEG standard, the company should have known within a few years of its adoption that it may infringe their patent.

    • Re:ridiculous patent, but that isn't even the prob (Score:5, Informative)

      by Doctor7 ( 669966 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @04:06PM (#8960613)
      the company should have known within a few years of its adoption that it may infringe their patent.

      The original company did, and waived any claim over JPEG (not to the patent, just that they would not claim for its use in JPEG). But there's no legal mechanism for writing such conditions into the patent, so when Forgent bought the company and obtained the patent, they were not bound by the wishes of the original company. It's almost the same as with copyright - the copyright holder can put any conditions he likes on the work, including 'I retain the copyright but do what you like with it', but unless he actually states that he is releasing it to the public domain, someone who later obtains the copyright can change those conditions.

      • That's not really the case with copyrights. If you give someone a license to a copyright, and the license didn't specify a way for you to revoke it, then you or future owners of the copyright can't turn around and revoke it. (I remember hearing of some exception to this designed to allow musicians to renegotiate after a number of years, but in general...).

        When this gets to court, it may come down to the defendants saying, "We were told this was OK, no fair changing your mind." And hopefully the court wi

  • Look who's on their target list - Bwahahahah!!!!! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jayfar ( 630313 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @03:06PM (#8960267)
    Look, LOOK, in the middle of their list. Are they really sure they want to do that?

    Lined up as defendants are: Adobe Systems, Agfa Corporation, Apple Computer , Axis Communications Incorporated, Canon USA, Concord Camera Corporation , Creative Labs Incorporated, Dell Incorporated, Eastman Kodak Company, Fuji Photo Film Co USA, Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Gateway Inc, Hewlett-Packard Company, International Business Machines Corp, JASC Software, JVC Americas Corporation, Kyocera Wireless Corporation, Macromedia Inc, Matsushita Electric Corporation of America, Oce' North America Incorporated, Onkyo Corporation, PalmOne Inc, Panasonic Communications Corporation of America, Panasonic Mobile Communications Development Corporation of USA, Ricoh Corporation, Riverdeep Incorporated (d.b.a. Broderbund), Savin Corporation, Thomson SA, Toshiba Corporation and Xerox Corporation.

  • Drop the plugin (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Let say they go after GIMP. Can't the GIMP
    developers just drop jpeg support then? I mean
    the are other image formats out there. This
    might just be the catalyst to make .png or .svg
    even more popular.

  • Gimp shmimp (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sacrilicious ( 316896 ) <qbgfynfu.opt@recursor.net> on Saturday April 24, 2004 @03:59PM (#8960550) Homepage
    I don't get why this article, and much discussion following it, are focusing on the effect of the alleged patent on the Gimp. Jpeg is simply one of many file formats the Gimp reads and writes; the heart and sould of the Gimp is not any given file format, it's the painting tools. Was the Gimp mentioned simply because it's the only way someone can think of to frame the issue in terms of some kind of open source??

  • What's the patent for anyway? DCT? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Prof.Phreak ( 584152 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @03:59PM (#8960551) Homepage
    What's the patent for anyway? I can think of only a handful of things that are `key' to JPEG:

    DCT, quantization, and Huffman.

    quantization is just lossy scailing (how they can patent scailing?). Huffman is patent free. That leaves DCT, but isn't that just _very basic_ transform?

    And if they parent jpeg, doesn't it also mean they have the rights to low/high pass image filters?

    Am I missing something? (sorry, don't really wanna read through the patent to figure out... would just like to get a quick clue on what's this all about...)
    • Just looked through the patent... Wow. If it's valid, everyone owes them money. They got stuff that applies to sound, images, and video in there. MPEG is just as `under' this thing as JPEG is... as well as (conceptually can be argued) MP3.

      Link to patent: Coding system for reducing redundancy [uspto.gov]

      It is sort of similar to the parent of `storing and manipulating binary numbers in an electronic device' pattent. Everything sorta falls under it in some way or another.

  • Merge them all (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @04:35PM (#8960790) Journal
    SCO, Forgent, Amazon etc. should merge into one big dubious IP lawsuit conglomerate. They could call themselves Sueonics, One Click Lawsuits, Patent Breathing, etc.

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