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You didn't do a very good job looking at their site if all that you came away with was their scheduling software. Right from their homepage you are given two links - Software or Intellectual Property. From their IP link, you might find out that "In addition to the approximate 40 patents the company has secured or acquired over the past 15 years, Forgent has applied for dozens of patents relating to various products and software the company has developed over the past several years."

So, if you actually read what they do with software, you will find that their software does both scheduling and asset tracking. What, a company that has developed useful products that fit a definite market and have a definite place in the business world, yet has made contributions to the advancement of technology as well? How does that make them guilty of patent trolling?

Such claimes must be backed up by evidence.
Is this libel?!
SUE SUE SUE SUE SUE!

Being the owners of such an important patent and winning a nice settlement I assumed that Forgent must be a premier technology company providing important advances in technology and related products to our technology driven society, so I had a look at their website and what did I find?

"Our software division, NetSimplicity makes easy-to-use, scheduling software for any need -- scheduling rooms, resources and I.T. assets."

WTF, they make scheduling software for meeting rooms?!? I think I smell patent troll.

Uhhh, yes he can. And he did. Never underestimate the awesome powers of Slapdash "editors" - it really is FoRgent, not "Fogent".

http://www.forgent.com/ip/index.shtml

What is it with these pseudo companies that are formed just to hold supposed IP? We have companies like SCO group, Forgent Networks and NTP who do not really have any products, but whose business model is to go out and purchase any and all "patents" they can get their hands on. They then do nothing with those patents until one day in the future, they identify some product or company that has a product that has come about through parallel evolution or innovation and then try and sue the pants off of them. Most of these companies employees are not doing anything productive as they are a bunch of lawyers on staff who are parasites on technology and innovation doing nothing but sucking the life out innovation and progress.

It has got to be apparent that this business model has nothing to do with innovation and everything to do with piracy and racketeering.

You must be thinking about Forgent, who basically abandoned their scheduling product line in favor of buying up patent portfolios, and suing everyone in sight that might be violating them. Unlike SCO, Forgent has actually succeeded in ripping off millions of dollars in licenses for such things like JPEG, and are moving into suing PVR manufacturers.

...to their website. here it is.

They have been pursuing licensing agreements since at least 2002.

Not only did they pick two lossy formats to use as examples, both MP3 and JPEG are patent-encumbered formats. (The validity of the Forgent patent on a piece of JPEG is a bit of a still-contested issue... but I'll leave that to others to discuss.) If you want to write a program using either of those formats, you're going to have to pay the toll.

Let's hope U3D is able to stay clear of such entanglements. Having a patent involved in a file format makes it questionable if FOSS can legally use the format.

Well excuse the hell out of me!

Go ahead, read the previously linked articles on Forgent's own site.

Forgent may be the most striking local example of tech companies looking to exploit their portfolio of patents.

"... mining of patents ... for rockect boosters"

Just how many deals? Forgent's chief technical officer, Ken Kalinoski, shows off a two-page list of companies that Forgent thinks have used the technology that yielded the first two deals. Of the many possible uses for the technology, this list is only of digital camera makers. "And," he says, smiling, "it's in fairly small type." Forgent plans to contact every one.

"Basically, the team entered the mine looking for coal," Kalinoski says. "After some picking at the top layers of rock, we found a small diamond. Upon this find, we retrenched and changed our strategy to no longer look for coal, but rather look for large chunks of diamond".

All these are news paper cut-outs you can find on their site. I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you want to file a patent and make money of licensing, that's fine. But when you file a patent and grant royalty-free use, wait for people to adopt your technology, and then suddenly decide to charge people for using the technology, then that's wrong. You have to second guess their motives?

Heh, dig a little deeper, we'll prolly see they used PKZip to compress JPEGs and GIFs, used Cookies as identifiers, and initiated the transfer by Hyperlinks... from a Graphical and textual information on a video screen for purposes of making a sale.

All unlicensed, of course.

:))

Just fill out this form.
They probably need a few hundred /. partners.
And maybe signing up for their newsletter might be informative too. Or sign up for some training so you too can be ready for the new era of imaging. Or create a "trouble ticket" and let them know about the problems you are having with their JPEG technology. Or get a quote so you can pay for that JPEG based digital camera you bought. And last but not least... Sign up for a job there... since they will effectively own you and all your jpeg files.

Just fill out this form.
They probably need a few hundred /. partners.
And maybe signing up for their newsletter might be informative too. Or sign up for some training so you too can be ready for the new era of imaging. Or create a "trouble ticket" and let them know about the problems you are having with their JPEG technology. Or get a quote so you can pay for that JPEG based digital camera you bought. And last but not least... Sign up for a job there... since they will effectively own you and all your jpeg files.

Just fill out this form.
They probably need a few hundred /. partners.
And maybe signing up for their newsletter might be informative too. Or sign up for some training so you too can be ready for the new era of imaging. Or create a "trouble ticket" and let them know about the problems you are having with their JPEG technology. Or get a quote so you can pay for that JPEG based digital camera you bought. And last but not least... Sign up for a job there... since they will effectively own you and all your jpeg files.

Just fill out this form.
They probably need a few hundred /. partners.
And maybe signing up for their newsletter might be informative too. Or sign up for some training so you too can be ready for the new era of imaging. Or create a "trouble ticket" and let them know about the problems you are having with their JPEG technology. Or get a quote so you can pay for that JPEG based digital camera you bought. And last but not least... Sign up for a job there... since they will effectively own you and all your jpeg files.

Just fill out this form.
They probably need a few hundred /. partners.
And maybe signing up for their newsletter might be informative too. Or sign up for some training so you too can be ready for the new era of imaging. Or create a "trouble ticket" and let them know about the problems you are having with their JPEG technology. Or get a quote so you can pay for that JPEG based digital camera you bought. And last but not least... Sign up for a job there... since they will effectively own you and all your jpeg files.

Just fill out this form.
They probably need a few hundred /. partners.
And maybe signing up for their newsletter might be informative too. Or sign up for some training so you too can be ready for the new era of imaging. Or create a "trouble ticket" and let them know about the problems you are having with their JPEG technology. Or get a quote so you can pay for that JPEG based digital camera you bought. And last but not least... Sign up for a job there... since they will effectively own you and all your jpeg files.

Their newsletter! why not sign up someone @forgent.com or any subsidary. And sign em up for a few other good mailing lists too.

Unisys will sue Forgent for not paying any royalties on the software used to generate the 42 gif images on their webpage.

While that is going on. Forgent will sue Unisys for not paying any royalties on the .JPG image on their webpage (http://www.unisys.com/corporate/images/home/home/ content/main_photo_homepage.jpg)

When the lawyers have taken all of their money, both of them will declare bankruptcy and go out of business.

img src="images/front_page/logo_ForgentNetworks.gif"

Hmmm.... Wonder why they aren't using thier own technology?

Remember your heros!

Look at all the money the .gif royalties made Compuserve...

I bet they are paying royalties to compuserve too. Their own website has a bunch of images, - and all of them .gif's :)

Ironic, isn't it?