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Patents Government The Courts News

PUBPAT Makes Progress Against JPEG Patent 95

Posted by CowboyNeal from the fighting-the-good-fight dept.
The Data Compression News Blog writes "The US Patent Office has granted the Public Patent Foundation's request for a reexamination of the patent which Forgent Networks is reportedly using to harass anyone that implements the widely used JPEG format. They have already been challenged by many, but PUBPAT had the first concrete case with 'prior art'. In its Order granting PUBPAT's request, the Patent Office found that PUBPAT raised 'a substantial new question of patentability' regarding every claim of the the '672 Patent."
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PUBPAT Makes Progress Against JPEG Patent More

PUBPAT Makes Progress Against JPEG Patent

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  • Could they be sued? succesfully? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by robbak ( 775424 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @09:53PM (#14631752) Homepage
    Question: If a corporation like this recieves licence fees for an invalid patent, What is preventing the licensees suing them for the money that they have extorted?
    • I have often wondered that very same thing. In the end though. I think it goes something like this from the licensors point of view; Sorry you are not due any monies, refund, etal. When you (licensee) entered into the agreement it was done by both parties under good faith concerning the validity of the patent license you agreed to. Now I don't know how well they can make that stick in a court of law. But then otoh, it could go something along the lines of selling the Brooklyn Bridge even if that were not

      • Re:Could they be sued? succesfully? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02, 2006 @10:24PM (#14631922)
        The reason the patent holders can keep the money is because the law favors them completely.

        Let's say I had a company with reasonable funds (enough to support going to court). I have a patent that looks pretty solid so I ask Sony to pay me a license fee. Sony comes back and offers me a contract that says "we agree to pay this license fee, however, the full amount shall be refunded in the event that the patent is invalidated".

        My company would just say "sorry, remove that invalidation clause or we'll sue you for patent infringement and win".
        • You missed his point. He was writing in past tense. Your company already got compliance on the license and it has now been shown to not, in fact, own a valid patent. I then sue your company for inbursment of the extorted amount. More clear?
          • I don't think that the point is missed at all, I write contracts for a living, and when the other party has "got the hammer", the contract agreement is always written in their favour. So you are not going to get a licensing agreement that allows you to sue. In fact the license agreement will probably not even be "silent" about this issue, but specifically exclude it. Lawyers might be greedy, but they are not always stupid.
        • And this is still not air tight enough for the greedy patent trolls and lawyers, they want the "first to invent" turned into the "first to file" there-by invalidating any "prior art" defences.

          But the patent system is there to protect inventors from invention theft, and there-by foster innovation. It works pretty well to foster greed don't you think? Maybe the patent system is an anachronism, that has lived past the end of its useful life?
      • I think thats a hell of a good question. There could be the argument that the original claim was fraudulent, so therefore any and all contracts are null and void, and Oh, By the Way, We would like our money back with interest at the prevailing fed rate at least, plus triple damages for the fraud, plus all attorney's fees. That would bring this whole mess to such a screeching halt it would take 20 years to get the burnt rubber and asbestos dust out of the environment.

        Nice concept, but like the Blackberry c
        • Awww come on.... let us have the dream:

          {Big Co} decides that they were ripped off and decides to get "compensation"
          {Big Co} sues {Patent Troll Co}
          {Big Co} wins, even on appeal
          Lawyers everywhere drop dead from heart attacks because now they have to make sure they have legitimate grounds for suing someone......

          ahhhh... the bliss would almost be too much.

    • Most likely because there would be something in the "licensing agreement" to protect the patent holder from exactly this kind of thing....some legal language that basically says "even if the patents are found invalid, we still get to keep your money"

      If the patent holder could be shown to have been working in bad faith (ie they knew the patent should not be valid, but were extorting the money anyway) then it is probably a different situation, but that would be a very difficult thing to prove.
    • Your question is based on an invalid premise, namely, that there is anything preventing anybody from suing anybody else for any or no reason.
    • I don't have any clue about US law (TM), but I assume that the contract someone is subscribing to in order to use certain technological archievements is constructed in a manner which basically says that 'we (the company holding the patents) won't sue you if you use this kind of technology'. Just like SCO's antidot license.
      So there won't be any regress.
      • Redress, not regress. And it must be getting late. I stared at that word for far too long, thinking 'THAT ain't right... er, IS it?!' before finally recalling the correct word.
        • That's funny, I never heard of the word redress before and it's not what I meant, because redress is more like a compensation for something done to you (no contract involved beforehand)

          Regress as a word exists in English, but it's not used like I thought (I'm a non native speaker obviously). All I wanted to say is that the contract might not cover the case that SCO's claims are not right, so there wouldn't be any ground for demanding money back in this scenario. I'm sorry for causing any deep thoug
    • Ummm....the likelihood that the laywers will collect as much or more than the license fees involved? The fact that "extortion" won't be a factor in the case?

    • Re:Could they be sued? succesfully? (Score:5, Informative)

      by darkmeridian ( 119044 ) <william.chuangNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday February 03, 2006 @12:50AM (#14632669) Homepage
      It's in the contract. Parties license patents to avoid litigation. They know the patent may be invalid, but it's easier to settle sometimes rather than die trying. They waive their right to recoup the licensing costs if the patents are later invalidated. Exceptions exist if there was inequitable conduct (basically fraud) before the PTO while obtaining the patents. then all bets are off.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The Prior Art: (Score:5, Informative)

    by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @09:54PM (#14631758) Journal
    http://www.pubpat.org/672ReexamOrdered.pdf [pubpat.org]

    Is US Patent No. 4,541,012 to Tescher

    Just a short blurb from the reexamination order
    "The request details those portions of Tescher as being relevant to claims 1-11 with suggestion that claims 12-46 are either identical to, or obvious implementations of claims 1-11, the detailed claim chart for independant claim 1 is shown on pages 3-4 of the request"
    Basically, Tescher preempts claims 1-11 of Chen and claims 12-46 of Chen's patent just repeat 1-11.

  • More funding for additional work at application (Score:4, Informative)

    by PornMaster ( 749461 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @09:57PM (#14631772) Homepage
    I'd really like to see some more resources dedicated in the initial granting process rather than simply cheer the decisions to review. Allowing someone to patent an unoriginal idea contradicts the notion of promoting the useful arts which the Constitution provides for.
    • The problem is that Congress took away funding from the PTO, and isn't likely to give it back, in fact they take away money that the PTO makes on filing fees. The average patent examiner spends the same amount of time looking over a patent as a patent litigator will spend in one week prepping for trial. The amount of money that would have to be put into the system would be... well it just wouldn't happen. There are other alternatives that have been proposed but just adding money/people probably isn't the

      • Re:More funding for additional work at application (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @10:46PM (#14632029)
        The answer is to get experts in the field involved in examining patents before they are "rubber stamped".
        If people that knew what they were talking about technically (and preferablly leaglly too) were involved in deciding if a patent was valid or not, we wouldnt see so many crappy patents. Enough people would be required to look at it such that people wouldnt be able to say "no, its not valid" because they have a vested interest in being able to use that stuff and not pay for it (also, a simple "no" wouldnt suffice, actual links to prior art or whatever else would need to be presented)

        Also, introduce a clause in the rules that says that if a patent is found invalid (either in the initial investigation or later on by a court), the patent holder has to pay up to the PTO.

        The idea of "you have to demonstrate your patent somehow" (e.g. for a patent on something like an encryption algorithim, you have to demonstrate working code for it) would also help.
        • Impossible and Implausible! This makes perfect sense, so how could you even conceive that this idea would work with/be allowed near Government or Government Bureaucracy?
          Pffft.
        • The answer is to get experts in the field involved in examining patents before they are "rubber stamped".
          If people that knew what they were talking about technically (and preferablly leaglly too) were involved in deciding if a patent was valid or not, we wouldnt see so many crappy patents.

          Too expensive. What would it cost to get good computer scientists doing something not-so-fun as examining patent applications?

          Maybe make it part of a deal -- "get your PhD on a government scholarship, but spend part of yo
          • The idea of "you have to demonstrate your patent somehow" (e.g. for a patent on something like an encryption algorithim, you have to demonstrate working code for it) would also help.

            Yes. There is very little reason that I can think of for this not to be a requirement. I don't think that it solves much, though -- my concern is not people filing impossible patents or patents that are very difficult for those people to implement, but simply taking areas of ideas and holding monopolies over them without then

        • The idea of "you have to demonstrate your patent somehow" (e.g. for a patent on something like an encryption algorithim, you have to demonstrate working code for it) would also help.

          Wouldn't work, which is why it's not there. Build your own new MRI machine before patenting it? My patented code is for a Honeywell mainframe, you want me to lug one to the PO? No sir.

        • "If people that knew what they were talking about technically (and preferably legally too) were involved in deciding if a patent was valid or not, we wouldnt see so many crappy patents."

          I totally agree, this is the function the USPTO is intended to perform. Unfortunately, as technology as increased the ability of patent examiners to have comprehensive knowledge of the art has decreased, which results in crappy patents. The solution is obviously to allow the USPTO to keep more of the revenue it generat

    • I'd really like to see some more resources dedicated in the initial granting process rather than simply cheer the decisions to review. Allowing someone to patent an unoriginal idea contradicts the notion of promoting the useful arts which the Constitution provides for.

      Well, that was the idea when the USTPO was re-organized quite a few years ago, to make it self-supporting. But somehow, the fees charged never seem to wind up buying more reviewers with technical knowledge suitable for the job, or computers e

      • Re:More funding for additional work at application (Score:4, Interesting)

        by mdfst13 ( 664665 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @12:28PM (#14635434)
        I'm not sure that the problem is even the "smartness" of the people doing the reviews. The problem is that they have about four hours to find a reason to deny a patent.

        It's easy enough to sit around /. and say "This patent sucks." It's much harder to encapsulate said suckage into a reason to deny a patent.

        In the modern world, I think that it is impractical to expect anyone, no matter how smart, to be able to find the weak spot in a patent in a mere four hours.

        IMO, we would be better off going the other way. Make the initial patent application just a listing. Instead of writing Patent Pending, write Patent Requested. Then, when they try to use the patent, the challenge comes from the recipient. Also, patent infringement notices should all be sent *through* the patent office (for another fee). I.e. the workflow would be

        File patent application.
        Notify others that you feel that they are infringing.
        The defendant (who is presumably in the field; otherwise how are they infringing) researches prior art and challenges the patent.
        Both sides present their evidence to each other.
        If neither has admitted the other is correct, they can then go to a review at the patent office. The loser of the review pays the review fees.

        The fundamental problem with the current system is that it is not possible for a single person to perform such a review at the proper level of importance. Some of these patents are requesting multi-million dollar fees. Some would be happy with $10,000. How do you support both uses with a one size fits all fee?

        If you are really committed to the idea of an up front application review, perhaps we should reconsider how patents can be used. E.g. what if a patent application also had to include the licensing fees? I.e. I might file a patent and say that users could pay either $10,000 for an unlimited license or $1 per use (with a cap of $10,000; i.e. the 10,001st use would be free). The applicant needs to set

        1. The max fee per user ($10,000 in this example).
        2. The fee per use ($1).
        3. The max to be collected.

        Every purchaser of the unlimited license would become a part owner of the remainder of the patent. Once the original patenter gets the max amount to be collected, all the licensers (to that point) now own the patent and may license it to others *up to* the amount that they themselves paid. Once they all have licensed the amount they have paid (or 14 years, whichever comes first), the patent expires.

        Now, here's the kicker: base the patent application fee on the max to be collected amount. E.g. 5%. That will determine how much effort the patent office puts into researching the patent. As a result, people who can realistically expect their patent to be the next big thing will pay huge fees up front, will get lots of patent review, and will presumably make back the money in licensing. People who put in $5000 worth of work and are hoping for $10,000 in fees will pay much smaller application fees, get little patent review, but will not cost that much.

        I would still prefer the delayed review. I think that it is fairer to all concerned and puts much less burden on the patent office. This is an example of an alternative.
        • The problem with forcing a patent holder to prove that a patent is valid, rather than force the accused infringer that it is not valid, is that it is really impossible to prove that a patent is valid. This would require proving that there is no prior art. How would you do that? What you could do is keep the system as it is, but make the loser pay all reasonable costs associated with the litigation. That would make a person with a weak patent think twice before asserting it.

  • Now Linux can support JPEG! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02, 2006 @09:58PM (#14631775)
    Oh wait, it already does. What's the difference between MP3s and JPEGs, such that we'll violate patents for JPEGs but not for MP3s?

    • The difference (Score:5, Funny)

      by ad0gg ( 594412 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @10:23PM (#14631917)
      Mp3s make you deaf
      Jpegs make you blind

    • Re:Now Linux can support JPEG! (Score:5, Informative)

      by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @10:39PM (#14631989)
      The difference is that people who know what they are talking about both legally and techically have said that the MPEG patents are valid (no idea if they have been tested in court or not though) but those same people (including the pubpat people) say that the JPEG patent in question is not valid.

      Also, a lot more people have been sued for violating (or made to pay licence fees for) the MPEG patents than have been for this JPEG patent

    • Knowledge of patent encumberance. (Score:5, Informative)

      by jbn-o ( 555068 ) <mail@digitalcitizen.info> on Thursday February 02, 2006 @11:13PM (#14632165) Homepage
      Neither of the commenters to date take your question seriously, so I'll make a guess: at the time software was developed to encode and decode JPEG, it was not common knowledge that JPEGs were ostensibly patent-encumbered. As far as I know, no unencumbered alternative to JPEG was developed. But it is widely understood among those who deal with these matters that MP3 is patent-encumbered and that we should use and encourage others to use the apparently unencumbered (and higher quality, besides) Ogg Vorbis instead.

      • Pondering... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) * <jmorris&beau,org> on Thursday February 02, 2006 @11:46PM (#14632346)
        > But it is widely understood among those who deal with these matters that MP3 is
        > patent-encumbered and that we should use and encourage others to use the apparently
        > unencumbered (and higher quality, besides) Ogg Vorbis instead.

        Yes, MPEG was always upfront that they were pooling patents and doing the RAND thing. But I have a question. When do they start expiring? I remember a VCD like tech (OS9-68K based, Phillips, brain cramp on the name now.... CDI?) in the late 1980's and VCD (MPEG1 video, MPEG1 layer 1 audio) itself not much later. MPEG1 layer 2 was the failed Phillips Compact Digital Cassette in what, 1992? Question is what is the date on the patents, especially of course on MPEG 1 layer 3 audio and MPEG2 video. AC3 audio is probably several years newer so the last part of DVD and HD-TV won't be public for a bit.

        I'm thinking we need to find out and start a countdown, much like everyone did for RSA and the GIF patents.
        • Well patent 4698672 [uspto.gov] was first filed in October 1986. So add twenty years, and that's 2006.

          The date on the patent document says October 6, 1987. But I'm sure it's 20 years after filing, not processing.

          It seems like a last ditch effort to scrounge for money. Because in 9 months in won't matter anymore.

          If you get someone pregnant tonight, you could celebrate the birth of your child on the same day as JPEG becomes free (as in no-threats-of-lawsuits).

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

          by evilviper ( 135110 )

          Yes, MPEG was always upfront that they were pooling patents and doing the RAND thing.

          MPEG != MP3

          When do they start expiring? I remember a VCD like tech (OS9-68K based, Phillips, brain cramp on the name now.... CDI?) in the late 1980's and VCD (MPEG1 video, MPEG1 layer 1 audio) itself not much later. MPEG1 layer 2 was the failed Phillips Compact Digital Cassette in what, 1992?

          MPEG-1 video and audio (layer 1/2) patents have long since expired.

          Question is what is the date on the patents, especially of course o

        • Since HDTV uses MPEG 2 in the US, and the government has mandated its use... Could that invalidate the patents here? I know similar things have happened with copyrights being revoked (when the material was encoded into law by reference or some such). IANAL, and apparently this argument doesn't work for MPEG. Any "IP" lawyers out there care to explain exactly when and how this comes into play?

          Thanks

    • The JPEG standard actually includes support for an alternate entropy coding method (the last, non-lossy part of the compression applied after the lossy compression) based on something called arithmetic coding. Elements of that method were well-known to be patented, so it was not included in the widely-used basic JPEG implementation (by the Independent Jpeg Group). As such, it may have been part of the official standard, but it was not really part of the de facto standard, because it was known to be patented

  • PNG Anyone? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Personally, I use PNG for everything.

    Hooray open source!

    • Even photos? (Score:2, Informative)

      by tbird81 ( 946205 )
      PNG isn't really designed for compression of photography. It's great that it's lossless, but this is not rarely necessary in real life.

      At 90% JPEG compression, (which is pretty high quality) you'll have a .jpg file less than half the size of a 24-bit PNG.

      PNG is good for diagrams, and things with large patches of solid colour. It doesn't use the "eye-trickery" of JPEGs, so will never get as good a filesize.

      File size is still important. Even though diskspace is cheap, pictures are getting bigger. The 7

      • Not a photographer are you? There are lots of reasons I want to use lossless formats. And how do you figure capturing 7 million pixels is going to take over 40 million bytes? Most cameras have 12 bit sensors, so at 2 bytes per pixel, we're talking at most 14MB and even that can be reduced quite a bit with lossless compression. Admittedly I'm not familiar with the technicalities of the PNG format, but I'm pretty sure it's not that inefficient.
        • haha,
          you got me there. I don't know where 40MB came from. Pulled it out of somewhere i guess.

          A random (low detail) photo taken with a 7.1MP camera (at 3072x2304 pixels), takes up about 20MB of memory loaded in photoshop (using 24bpp). This can be saved as a lossless PNG at 7.5MB, or as a high-quality JPEG (85 PS 'Save for Web' quality) at 2MB.

          I'm not a photographer, and i realise that JPEG saving will decrease quality. And I know that an image should be compressed lossily only at the last step. There i

  • Prior Art demonstrated on ASCII (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02, 2006 @11:09PM (#14632147)
    I'd just like everyone to know, I've filed a claim of prior art in the name of a long deceased relative on ASCII, and every poster here may be in violation of my patent. Please remove your posts at once or I will be disposed to take legal action. Your IP has been logged.
  • The PDF seems to indicate that the "prior art" is another patent, one that is only prior by one year. Does this mean that the prior patent's holder can ask for royalties based on the older patent? This does not seem to place the jpeg format fimly back in the public domain.
    • From the article:

      For various reasons, many of the patents issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ("PTO") actually contain no innovation. Such patents effectively allow private actors to recapture ideas that were previously in the public domain. PUBPAT protects the public domain from being recaptured in new patents. PUBPAT's primary tool for protecting the public domain is filing requests for re-examination with the PTO. A reexam request is the formal mechanism for asking the PTO to revoke an issued
    • As near as I can tell, the reason this patent (Tescher 4,541,012) is important is that it has EXPIRED (as of September, 2005... nice timing that). By invalidating the later patent, it basically drops the JPEG format into open domain.

      However, let me make this perfectly clear: IANAL (Especially not a patent lawyer).

      --Jimmy
  • The algorithm's limbo has left libjpeg.so largely unmodified for a decade or so now. The most notable additions are the EXIF [wikipedia.org] support and the addition of some more color-spaces in the version shipped by Sun inside Java's libjpeg.

    What is sorely missing, though, is the way to crop and do 90, 180, 270 degree rotation without decoding/encoding (and thus without additional loss of quality). The jpegtran [hp.com] part of the free JPEG-distribution can do this, but the library itself remains too low-level and all graphics

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