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Suddenly a JPEG Patent and Licensing Fee
Michael Long writes "Forgent Networks (www.forgentnetworks.com) has announced that it owns the software patent on JPEG compression technology, and has stated that it is "in contact" with computer, software, camera, and other digital imaging product manufacturers regarding licensing terms. This ambush of the digitial imaging industry will probably stand as the worst public relations nightmare a company can inflict upon itself."
No, that was UniSys:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html
Apple is strangling Firewire adoption (IEEE 1394) with patent royalty fees.
Abstract: The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for processing signals to remove redundant information thereby making the signals more suitable for transfer through a limited-bandwidth medium. The present invention specifically relates to methods and apparatus useful in video compression systems. Typically, the system determines differences between the current input signals and the previous input signals using mean-square difference signals. These mean-square signals are processed and compared with one or more thresholds for determining one of several modes of operation. After processing in some mode, the processed signals are in the form of digital numbers and these digital numbers are coded, using ordered redundancy coding, and transmitted to a receiver.
The applicable patent for GIF had to do with LZW compression, and was/is owned by Unisys.
First, they mention owning the patent for all fields of use except satellite broadcast...does that mean that if I'm going to prepare a digital photo for satellite Internet trasmission, their patent doesn't cover it?
Second, they mention declaring that they have / own / control the patent, but they don't mention who developed the technology. Does anybody know if they just bought the patent from someone? Did they actually come up with the technology? Or did they sign a contract with a patent holder who has given them exclusive licensing rights for certain fields of use?
JPEG does appear to be patent-encumbered, by patents such as this one, but I can't find any references to Forgent or the patent number referenced in its press release.
it's kinda long. will talk more when i go through the damn thing.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
They could say this covers EVERYTHING, JPEG, MPEG, PNG, AVI etc etc etc. What the hell is wrong with the US patent office? I hope some high court has the sense to see that this patent is much to broad and will only stifle development.
Switching to PNG does at first sound like an obvious solution, but it isn't. PNG and JPG are made for different purposes. PNG is a lossless compression while JPG is a lossy compression.
Sometimes you need a lossless compression, and for that purpose PNG usually gives you the smallest file among lossless compressions.
But sometimes you want a lossy compression to be able to get smaller resulting files. I just picked a random JPG file off my harddisk and converted it to PNG. The file grow by a factor nine.
PNG is a good alternative to GIF, bug PNG is not a good alternative to JPG.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
This is the oldest myth in the book, and one of the most oft repeated I see. .25 per unit is 'strangling' the adoption rate.
While Apple helped develop the FireWire spec, it doesn't collect all the licensing fees. The licensing fees go to the IEEE1394 consortium (of which Apple's a member) and it's the consortium that decides the division of the licensing monies on a patent-by-patent basis.
Also, I wouldn't say that
Previous work
Excellent JPEG INFO FAQ.
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/jpeg-faq/
The JPEG standard was designed by the "Joint Photographic Experts Group"
This patent is either totally off base, or someone is playing games with the patent system. There is no way that this patent will stand up as is.
~ kjrose
Did the WIPO get there evil little way and make US patents that would not be granted in other countries applicable in those countries?
In the UK/europe you cann't (yet) patent
Gene sequences,
Computer Software
Business Models
etc....
So why the hell should countries that don't allow that kind of patent bother to act on them.
Move all your R+D &co out-side the US when you want to avoid US laws like DMCA and stupid patents
Even better lobby the government whatever county you in not to accept those stupid patents.
I have never read the JPEG patent but using applied first principles I could probably come up with several lossy/non-lossy compression algoithms that violate that patent. There no real added value in applying first principles.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
You can look at the online version of the patent on the US Patent Office's website. Note that the patent process for this one was started 16 years ago in 1986 (stuff 4698672 into the Patent Number Search box on the search page to see this), which would certainly limit how much longer it could be pursued.
To me, the patent seems to largely be focussed around runlength encoding in digital video - not that this always has any real bearing on how a specific patent can suddenly become profitable. That patent itself states:
[...]It'll be interesting, and rather sad, to see if this actually get applied against JPEGs....
That is not correct. You are thinking of trademark law. The best example is Kleenex. Kleenex made no attempt to protect their trademark and it has become so prolific in society that it has come to mean disposable tissue in the generic sense. Patent law has no such requirement.
Sorry.
Amazingly, you can't do it. It is called the equitable defense of laches. Laches says that if you have an unreasonable delay is bringing suit against someone, you can't get any damages for their infringement of your patent during your delay. Your patent doesn't expire, but it become very limited in who you can sue with it. You can read MUCH more about laches at this site.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
No, it was filed in 1986. Therefore it has 20 years from the date of filing or 17 years from the date of issue, whichever is longer. Therefore, the patent would last until 2006.
Here's the problem. PNG is a good solution when you want lossless compression, which is (not coincidentally) exactly what GIF did. This matters when you actually care about the numbers in the image, or when you've got certain kinds of content (sharp edges and smooth color gradients in particular). JPEG is appropriate when you have pictures that look more like the real world... lots of variation, certain frequency distributions, tons of detail. The reason it works so well is that it removes information that you-the-user can't see and then does lossless compression on the rest. That is something that PNG doesn't do.
IANAL, but offhand I see two good bets for defeating this patent claim. The first is that it expires in two years: it was granted in 1987. The other is prior art: the original JPEG group was formed in 1985 by combining CCITT and ISO working groups trying to do roughly the same thing. (Source: The History of ISO 10918. I wasn't there; I'd appreciate corrections.) This patent seems to cover most of the components of JPEG and some of MPEG, and I just can't imagine that the JPEG committee hadn't come up with at least some of that by 1987.
That said, I do hack video and image encoders but I'm not a lawyer. I hope to see this claim shot down in flames. Quickly. I'm bothered by the idea that someone could out of the blue come and claim patent rights over my dissertation before I even finish it.
http://www.c3.lanl.gov/~brislawn/JPEG.0003/tsld002 .htm
A brief history of JPEG, which started in 1985. I think it can be fought on the premise that the patent was based on the work of the consortium, and not the work of the person who filed the patent. First to invent, not first to file.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
You are mixing Trademark law with Patent law. These are two VERY different animals. What you say is true about Trademarks.
Patents may be defended at the owners choice. They don't expire due to lack of use. Trademarks
do if they aren't defended.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
The important part:
--xPhase
The following sentence is TRUE. The previous sentence is FALSE.
Actually JPEG 2000 is a completely different beast. FWIW, JPEG 2000 is actually based on various technologies that are patented up the wazoo, especially wrt/wavelet technology. However, with JPEG 2000 the patent holders have agreed to make the patented technology available to all at no charge.
IRCC JPEG2000 uses wavelets but JPEG uses discrete cosine transform. And these are complitely different techniques to compress images. Wavelets compress the whole image and DCT only small blocks. But then again, I might be wrong :)
- Raynet --> .
What will likely happen is that Microsoft will look around and come up with a patent that they own that Forent or Compression labs is violating and they will come up with a cross-license agreement.
This is the big reason the patent system is screwed. The little guy, and that may well include Forent in this case, has no leverage against the big guys.
Doesn't JPEG stand for Joint Photographic Experts Group ? Isn't this the group that came up with the JPEG format in the first place?
According to JPEG what most of us believe to be JPEG files are actually JFIF which are royalty free thanks to C-Cube Microsystems. So Forgent Might not be due that much in royalties after all.
This might be a good thing after all. The restrictions on GIFs spawned a much better file format (PNG). This could do the same for Lossy Images.
i could not think of anything clever.
No. It expires in 2004, 17 years after the issue date. The 20 year rule only applies to patents filed after late 1995.
Scientific American actually has a good article about so-called "submarine" patents. Turns out there are ways to file for a patent and then delay its issuance for years. The details of the patent remain secret until it is issued. When the patent "surfaces" years after it's been filed, anyone who unknowingly used that idea is at the mercy of the patenteer.
An inventor named Lemelson was notorious for doing this sort of thing (see the article). He delayed one patent for 40 years after filing for it. Seems to me like a good (read "underhanded") way to make money off your ideas if you're (a) patient, and (b) too lazy to actually build and sell a product.
My spoon is too big!
Yet again something that will be tossed out under the Doctrine of Laches:
m .n sf/articles/5731FF9F4372B6ED85256B43006EA07D?OpenD ocument
/**/
"Laches is recognized as an equitable defense available to defendants in patent infringement litigation under 35 U.S.C. Section 282 (1988). Laches enables the infringer to avoid liability if the patent holder delays too long before commencing litigation. The doctrine flows from the longstanding, fundamental legal principle that equity will not protect those who sleep on their rights."
Reference: The Doctrine of Laches and Patent Infringement Litigation at URL:
http://tinyurl.com/pzt
Original URL before tinyurling:
http://www.converium.com/web/converium/converiu
Crow
Certainly not Liebeck... the linked summary makes it patently clear that she was sitting in the passenger side of a stopped vehicle.
Read their page and you'll know:
"Forgent and a national law firm, who has made and continues to make a significant investment to develop Forgent's IP licensing program, are the sole beneficiaries of the patent license revenue."
Hmmm, notice that the law firm is not named. Maybe anonymity is in its contract with Forgent. Just in case you feel compelled to comment to Forgent, here's the contact info on their page:
Forgent Media Relations:
Hedy Baker, 512/437-2789
hedy_baker@forgent.com
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/#history (By the way, despite the implications in some of CompuServe's old press releases and in occasional trade-press articles, PNG's development was not instigated by either CompuServe or the World Wide Web Consortium, nor was it led by them. Individuals from both organizations contributed to the effort, but the PNG development group exists as a separate, Internet-based entity.)
Unfortuneately, PNG is not a replacement for JPG.
Why?
JPG is a lossy encoding mechanism. It disacrds a significant amount of information in any given image to create smaller file size.
PNG is a lossless encoding mechanism. It uses several very intelligently designed formulas and structures to very efficiently encode an image to reduce its file-size without losing any image data.
Because of this difference, PNG files of all but the simplest images will *always* be larger than corresponding JPG files.
For simple graphics like logos, stylized text, and flat-shaded cartoons, PNG can be made to produce better looking images at lower filesize than JPG or even GIF. For this reason, PNG is idea for making simple graphics for websites such as blocks of color, logos, etc. For photographic or shaded images of any kind, JPG is simply better at producing better image quality at smaller filesizes.
Now, if you're on any kind of broadband connection, that point becomes pretty moot since the difference between downloading a 10k jpeg and a 100k PNG is less than a second. On modem connections, moving to all PNG would make the internet completely void of all but the simplest graphics.
IMHO, it's time to build a lossy format for storing graphics similar to Ogg Vorbis. Perhaps the video codec Ogg just released can be used to make reasonable single-framed movies? Anyone familiar with the format care to comment?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Claim 5: The method of claim 1 wherein said first values have the highest frequency of occurrence in said digital signals, wherein said second values have the next highest frequency of occurrence in said digital signals, and wherein said other values have the lowest frequency of occurrence in said digital signals.
The argument is that this claim covers spectral partitioning techniques, which are the basic ideas behind the DCT as used in Jpg, and the decomosition in wavelet partitionings. The basic idea used is to separate out the high frequency and low frequency components, and you encode the relivant components first.
Thus you can EASILY argue that this patent claim covers jpg (DCT) and wavelet based compression algorithms. It doesn't matter HOW the image is decomposed into spectral components, be it DCT or wavelet, for purposes of this patent.
Also, its going to be a bit of a hunt for prior art, because it was filed in 1986.
IANAL
Test your net with Netalyzr
The JPEG consortium may have formed in 1985, but the .jpg file format didn't come along until 1991, and that was based on considerations of a bunch of compression schemes considered in 1987, after the patent was filed.
Forgent networks are a local company here in Austin, TX. The local paper the Austin American statesmen had a story on them a week ago. The company has been suffering huge losses from there main business, when, one day they realized they had some useful patents from other acquired companies. One of which just secured them a deal with Sony, which they made about 15m on (minus 10m for lawyers)
So the attitude there is to become a "IP" company and milk profits from patents that they hold, they now offer deep incentives for employees that think of patentable ideas, and are (of course) predicting large revenue gains from enforcing current patents. The downside to this is that many of there patents expire in about 4 years, so they better hurry up with the litigation if they want to make any money.
I should note that Forgent is not a huge company, so there going to have a focused set of civil suites to companies that A: have deep pockets, B: are profiting off patents they own.
-Jon
this is my sig.
I'm not a lawyer, but I was one of the people in the working group that developed PNG. (I'm credited in the spec under the name Robert Poole, although I don't think they updated my contact info recently.) PNG uses the same compression scheme used in GNU gzip, and that scheme was chosen specifically because it had been well researched and found to not conflict with any current patents. It also gives fairly decent performance and compression ratios for highly entropic data.
That's not to say that some other aspect of the PNG spec won't come under fire -- the file format is similar enough to TIFF and the Amiga's IFF/ILBM that if there are some core patents on tagged file formats, we could be in trouble. But that's doubtful, since prior art would probably play a role in any defense against such a patent assault. Bottom line -- if PNG comes under fire, the FSF lawyers would be all over the situation.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ; ;
There is a lot of misunderstanding in the open source community as to how patents work. The claims made by Ogg Vorbis (i.e. it is patent free) are extremely unlikely to be true.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
There seems to be a lot of misundestanding in you how Ogg Vorbis is (was) developed. It was *specifically* designed with prior knowledge of the existing patents in mind, and 2 independant patent searches were done (one of which by AOL!) to verify that nothing was being infringed.
It is completely free of any patent burden.
--
GCP
Hello, same anonymous coward here replying to self to tell all you knee-jerk reactionaries out there to put down the pitchforks. And whatever you do, don't invest in this company.
First, the patent talks about 2 encoding schemes and applying them to various scenarios.
A) Run-length encoding the amplitude of digitally sampled signal. An idea older than time, but not used in JPEG, so who cares.
B) Huffman encoding the amplitude of a digitally sampled signal. David Huffman (at latest) came up with the encoding scheme in 1953 (basing off him being in grad school when making it and age at death), so I think we can establish prior art.
But the real issue is JPEG, which is the lossy end of the coding scheme. This involves (excuse my math) a Discrete Cosine Transformation to translate the amplitues into the coefficients of the frequencies being encoded.
Huffman encoding doesn't come in until the lossless compression stage, which is technically not JPEG, but JFIF, the file system wrapped around the JPEG encoding scheme that makes JPEG encodning into a JPEG file we all know and love... a minor distinction, but again, any monkey can show prior art.
At the time, one of the writings mentioned a thing called "Equitable Estoppel." My interpretation was that if you had a patent that was becoming an industry standard, you had to begin notification "promptly," and to allow it to become a standard and *then* begin notifying/litigating was legally naughty.
Bearing in mind that equitable estoppel is a very new area of law (well, less than a century old anyway) that differs in the different common law jurisdictions, the basic principle behind it is that if:
then the party who has the legal rights can be prevented (estopped) from enforcing them.
Now, this varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and bearing in mind that in the United States there are 50 jurisdictions (or 51 if you count Louisiana, where I don't think this applies at all), some of the details will vary depending on where you are.
But yes, equitable estoppel might be a valid defence to this patent claim, subject to proving that the aggressor knew people were adopting JPEG because of a belief that it was patent free
IANALY,TINLA
The people behind PNG and Ogg Vorbis are well aware that patent law and copyright law are two entirely separate beasts, which is why they did not content themselves with just implementing things on their own. They in fact did exhaustive patent searches to make sure that nothing they did was in conflict with existing patents. In both cases it is likely, though not 100% certain, that they have suceeded. The PNG standard was pored over with a fine-toothed comb by the FSF's lawyers, and so far it appears to be clean, which is about as good as you can reasonably expect. Ogg Vorbis has not only been checked out by a lawyer hired by Ogg, but in fact has been vetted by AOL Time Warner (a corporation that's no stranger to patent law itself) because the current version of Winamp includes support for Ogg, and AOL (which owns Winamp) wanted to be sure that they weren't getting themselves into trouble by doing that.
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