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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."
If you don't collect licensces for your patent immediately, (i.e. within a reasonbale time frame) why do you get to do it years later (after everyone started using because it was free and efficient)?
Shouldn't your patent expire if you don't do anything to collect on it?
My new investment strategy is going to be patents. It certainly seems to be the only thing worth any money besides real estate. Surely there are patents sitting around that you can invest by buying them...
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
How can a company come in at this late date and declare a patent on jpeg? Isn't there prior art?
Yep - I am starting to feel that there needs to be some sort of regulation that if a patent has been in *widespread* public use after two years and the patent owner has not announced publically that they own a patent covering such technology, then they should be probhibted from suing implementers of the patent. 'Widespread' is is emphasized as the company or individuals should be able to protect their patent if it can be argued that there was a possibility that they didn't realise that anyone was infringing until date x.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Why does patent law allow this? JPEG has been around for YEARS! This is not something that somebody started using yesterday. This company sat on its hands while it waited for the format to become so entrenched and standardized that the rest of the world would have no choice but to accept some form of licensing agreement.
I say, if you have a patent on something, you have a limited amount of time to claim infringement after the infringement is discovered. This way, the overall damage is minimized and other formats can be adoped or created if necessary. If this company honestly didn't know it had a patent on JPEG, it probably was a waste of money to begin with.
Its one thing to allow the most obvious ideas to be patented, but its quite another to allow someone to take advantage of a patent to fleece entire industries. That's borderline fraud.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
And also owned by IBM (4,814,746). Which is another example of why software patents are not working - not only can't the examiners tell what's obvious, they can't even tell what they've already let be patented.
- The present invention specifically relates to methods and apparatus useful in video compression systems. It focuses on intra-frame compression technologies, incl motion detection and compensation, etc.
- This patent seems to only cover lossless transmission. (Removing redundant data, not removing information.)
- It uses Huffman-coding after performing statistical analysis, run-length encoding, etc, but not details on cosine transforms, which JPEG uses.
It appears that other patents they reference describe existing systems which use cosine transforms with lossy compression...I used to work there! Compression Labs (CLI) made equipment for digital video compression. They were the company behind the short-lived AT&T "videophone" that appeared in the early 1990's. Their main bread and butter was video conferencing systems for businesses and hotels. They were dedicated boxes on wheels, complete with TV and camera and computer, that looked like those old TV carts you see in schools. The idea was that you rolled them to whatever meeting room your company used, then hooked up to a T1 or ISDN line for the videoconference. They also made some other units, such as standalone systems for permanent installation, but the wheeled systems were the most popular.
Unfortunately as the generic PC became faster and better at handling video, there became less and less of a need for dedicated video compression hardware. The company started losing sales and going downhill. Compression Labs did have an industry niche, a very easy to use system that was completely turnkey, but as with so many things, low cost won out in the end.
VTEL, a competitor, bought Compression Labs. VTEL made similar videoconferencing machines, but they were integrated with a PC. They were harder to use, but had PC niceties such as the ability to share PC files and access over the videoconference. Unfortunately they weren't selling very well either.
I left the company around the time CLI was bought out by VTEL. It seems they've renamed themselves to Forgent, and set up a business model of providing services instead of selling boxes. Probably a smart move. It is a dumb move to enforce this patent, though!
While CLI had a lot of good patents, they applied mostly to video and the way it was compressed before transmission and restored after reception. They used the H.* standards for digital video transmission, but there is a lot of leeway in how you process the video signal at both ends to make the most use of the bandwidth, and this is where CLI's patents came in.
I don't believe this patent could apply to still images such as JPEG. Reading the patent, I see it mentions successive video frames quite often. Maybe there are some parts that deal with JPEG-like encoding methods, but IANAL. Honestly, I don't believe this patent can be valid, especially after the company submarined for so long and is only now claiming enforcement. They were a company I was once proud to be a part of, and it makes me sad to see them stooping to this level.
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
IANAL, but I can read a lawyer's writing (ICRALW):
The U.S. Supreme Court has long held the laches defense applicable to patent infringement cases. The defense contains two elements:
# The patent holder delayed bringing suit and that delay was unreasonable and inexcusable; and
# The alleged infringer suffered materially prejudicial harm from the delay.
A.C. Auckerman Company v. R.L. Chaides Construction Co., 960 F.2d 1020 (Fed. Cir. 1992), citing Lane & Bodley Co. v. Locke, 150 U.S. 193 (1893).
However: Patentees against whom the laches defense has been successfully invoked are barred from collecting only those damages that accrued prior to filing suit. (same citation)
Thus these guys can file suit, and if successful force royalties until their patent expires in a couple of years.
This issue isn't unique to modern times or the computer industry. A patent lawyer named George Selden used a vague patent to force people who built cars in the 1800's to pay a licensing fee. It wasn't until Henry Ford challenged that patent in 1903 that the auto industry took off.
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
I have a combined ten patents issued and in process in this specific field, so I believe I can call myself an expert in this matter.
... where the 4x6 is a run length encoding.
The claims in this patent cover digital streams which tend to come in tuples, possibly with appended data. Something like this:
(1,4) (1,3), (1,6), (4,6), (3,6), (9,6)
It specifically claims the separation of these tuples into separate run-length encoded streams.
In my example above, it might be:
(3x1, 4, 3, 9)
(4, 3, 4x6)
There are some further claims about coding signs and amplitude, and some table lookup mechanism to support the above.
The trouble is (for the patent holders), this is in NO WAY how JPEG works.
JPEG divides a video stream into blocks (8x8 and 16x16) of pixels, and runs them through a descrete cosine transform. Basically, this turns the representation of the picture into level and percentages of vertical and horizontal waveforms of various frequencies. It then quantizes these values (reducing their size and precision), and orders them from low frequency to high frequency. Then it subjects the whole thing to a run-length algorithm optimized to eliminate zeros (which high quant values tend to do). JPEG is a lossy algorithm that takes advantage of the fact that our eyes don't pick out errors in high frequency components as well as we do low frequency.
About the only claim this patent that's similar to JPEG is the Run Length Encoding. But that is covered by prior art that goes back forever.
PNG is a royalty free community owned format, similar to Ogg Vorbis...
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. Similarly, it is unlikely that the PNG format is not patented by someone.
The problem is that people tend to think of patents in much the same way that they think of copyrights. With copyrights, if a developer creates something without reference to the work of others, that developer is free and clear of other's copyrights, and can make it freely available. Not so with patents. A developer may create a new technology (PNG, Ogg Vorbis, etc), and that developer may choose to not patent it, but that technology is not free and clear of patents unless nobody has patented anything that is used in any part of the technology. If any part of your "new" idea has been thought of before, you're not clear of patent issues. Given the sheer number of software patents being filed and issued, given the incredibly broad claims that are being allowed, and given the fact that you don't have access to what patents are pending in the patent office (generally for a few years) just waiting to pop up, nobody can back up a statement such as, "I developed this, and it is patent-free."
I truly wish it were otherwise. As a former patent attorney, I have been watching the coming train wreck for a while now. It is only a matter of time before major chunks of what the open source community relies on turns out to be patented and owned by non-too-friendly people.
-Steve
Democracy is a poor substitute for liberty.
But, guess what? The most basic and fundamental of concepts in this field was covered by patents. This drove all companies and researchers away from the field. Today, I hardly hear about it.
The whole concept of patenting an algorithm is stupid. I am sure there are thousands of other promising areas where further research could have greatly enhance our lives - except that greedy patents make it impossible to pursue research in that area.
People who argue that patents give incentives to innovators fail to realize that an idea is only a spark. It can realize its full potential only if a lot of further research and development is done on it. However, the very same patents serve as deterrants for people who want to do further research.
Patents halt innovation, not the other way around!
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You can't claim damages.. but you CAN still stop them from using it from the present day and onwards unless they pay you the royalties you want. And that can be significant.