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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."
... I don't think I can afford to have a lien on my porn collection.
Look at all the money the .gif royalties made Compuserve...
How about JPEG 2000? Are they claiming any rights to this compression scheme? Because to be honest, JPEG 2000 is FAR superior, and it wouldn't take too much effort for companies to say "screw your royalty, we're producing JPEG 2000 cameras, etc. from now on."
But this doesn't surprise me. After MS claimed ownership of parts of OpenGL, that sorta opened the floodgates for really sad attempts to bilk more money out of an already financialy strapped populace/industry.
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.
*snort* what is the sound of millions of people flipping these guys off? Most people ignore the GIF compression threats - now we're supposed to fear for JPG suits? What about all the scanners out there whose default settings are to create JPG images? How about the thousands upon thousands of on-line amateur photographers whose thumbnails are in JPG format?
Let's face it: it was tough to change people's minds to use PNG instead of GIF. Do they really think they're going to make headway suing people for using JPG images? From the article:
"We wanted to ensure the investment community and the general public are clear about the terms of our valuable JPEG data compression technology, one of the many technologies we have in our patent portfolio," stated Richard Snyder, chairman and chief executive officer at Forgent. "We are in ongoing discussions with other manufacturers of digital still cameras, printers, scanners and other products that use JPEG technology for licensing opportunities."
Like I said, best of luck. I'd love to see this guy get his ass handed to him by the very large companies who use JPG compression.
But what does my opinion matter, I just vote here. It's not like I have any money or anything.
The GIF fiasco led to the superior PNG format, will this promote the use of wavelet compression? Assuming a patent-free algorithm exists ... I know there's a bunch of patents on wavelets ...
- Call them repeatedly at 866/276-FORG (3674) asking if their refrigerator is running.
- Pound www.forgentnetworks.com in the ass repeatedly with any scripts you kiddies might be tempted to use.
Do:- Have them check out that Goatse guy for his espressive use of "their" technologies.
Thank you for your support.NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
And this is why RAND is unacceptable in any public standard. Any body making public standards should require all participants to provide a license to anybody using that patent for the purpose of implementing that standard free of charge to all.
Given how patent-encumbered JPEG-2000, MPEG-4 et. al. are, this will seriously interfere with open implementation of these standards.
Would that that would slow their adoption....
www.eFax.com are spammers
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.
Now that JPEG 2000 has finally been standardized, and more companies are starting
to adopt it as a better JPEG both for compression and image quality;
can't the industry just tell Forgent to stick their patent where the
pixels don't shine?
Yes, I know there would still be a transition period to convert all that Pr0n over.
Now is the perfect time for us to consider widespread adoption of Zeosync's miraculous 100-to-1 compression technology.
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
it's kinda long. will talk more when i go through the damn thing.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
Man, what I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall in the meeting where these yahoo's go into Redmond and tell Microsoft they owe them a royalty for every version of IE, Office, and any other program that can read JPG's. They'll be lucky if Ballmer doesn't have their company bought or sued into the ground by the time they get their parking validated.
If the patent has existed since 1986, doesn't it expire at the end of 2003?
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
I bet that number would raise sharply if he looked in his IE cache. Heh
Switching from GIF to PNG was easy, because except for animation, PNG could do everything GIF could do, but better.
Switching from JPEG/JFIF to PNG is harder, because PNG doesn't have lossy compression (yet?). When you convert your JPEGs to PNGs, the file sizes are going to increase significantly.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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....
It would stand a better chance of being Mod'ed up if it was accurate, but the actuality is that the .gif royalties are charged to developers, not users of the end product, and they're paid to Unisys, not CompuServe. I worked at CompuServe during the whole GIF fiasco and it was CompuServe that developed the PNG format in response to Unisys's heavy handed ambush and released it without IP constraints.
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.
(* I don't think I can afford to have a lien on my porn collection. *)
Send it all back to Forgent. Email a few to each employee.
(begin letter)
Dear Forgent Employee,
Attached is some of my porn collection. I am returning it to your company because I inadvertantly used your patented JPEG format.
The rest is still to follow. My printer is slow. Playmate Debby especially requires a lot of ink because of her unorthodox techniques and tools, as you can clearly see in image #4057.
Thank You for your patience and understanding,
[Slashdot User]"
(end letter)
Table-ized A.I.
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.
The press release has many GIF images on it. I wonder if they paid UniSys any royalties?
My future's determined by Thieves, thugs, and vermin -- The Offspring
That's the only creation date I can find for the JPEG standard (ISO/IEC 10918-1:1994)
.
That, unfortunately, puts this patent way before the JPEG standard. I hope there's prior art. .
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
Patent terms are 20 years from filing date. They filed this in October 86, which gives them about 2.5 years.
I imagine they can sue for back royalties. Anyone know if that right expires along with the patent?
Thought this might be the last gasp of a distressed company, but Forgent Networks (NASDAQ:FORG) isn't doing too bad stock wise, for the year it's up 250%, down 12% for the month and up 12% for the week, currently 4.385; 52 week high 5.67, low 0.80.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
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??
Misleading examples, anyone?
The judgement in the "coffee case", Liebeck v. McDonald's, followed after over 700 other cases between 1982 and 1992 in which a McDonald's customer was burned by overheated coffee. Coffee is usually served around 140 degrees Fahrenheit; McDonald's was serving it at over 180. A liquid at 180 degrees F. will cause third-degree burns to human skin in between two and seven seconds. (A "third-degree burn" does not refer to the skin being burned away, but to the full thickness of the skin being burnt.) Coffee at 180 degrees is not fit for consumption, as it will severely burn the mouth and throat.
Stella Liebeck did not set out to mooch millions of dollars from McDonald's. She initially wanted a settlement of $20,000 to cover her medical costs -- which included eight days in the hospital and skin-grafting operations. A jury awarded her the $2.7 million dollars in punitive damages -- to punish McDonald's for knowingly continuing to put its customers in harm's way. The judge reduced punitive damages to $480,000 despite calling the company "reckless, callous, and willful" in its deliberate risking of customers' well-being in order to save costs.
See the link above for details. If you want to say that our society is too litigious, go ahead -- it is -- but please do not Ms. Liebeck for that. She was the victim of another of our society's problems -- corporations who believe it will be cheaper to pay off (or toss aside) victims of their recklessness rather than do the right thing in the first place.
- 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...- Lawyer's call it "The Last Sport of Kings". Why? Because it takes from between 2 to 4 million dollars, US, to effectively defend or litigate a patent infringement suit.
- Because of the high cost of defense or litigation, patent holders use this cost as a weapon to force capitulation by firms that don't want the costs of defending themselves, regardless of merit.
- Because of the above, patent holders will typically target small companies first, extort licensing fees, and then use those fees to progressively fund attacks against other potential violators.
- Once a patent is out, it is presumed that everyone knows about it. That means if you infringe the patent, you are open to damages for the time that you infringed the patent. The exception is that if the litigator bought the patent, they only get to sue from the time that they owned it.
So, what does that mean? You can bet that if they owned the patent the entire time, they very deliberately let widespread adoption of Jpeg's go forward, knowing that they could afterwards sue and probably settle with a number of graphics products producers, since even if the producers stop using their patented products, they were in violation of the patent for a long period of time.Oh, and yes, IANAL.
In other news, God has announced that he owns the earth, in fact he goes as far as to claim ownage of the whole universe. So in addition to worshipping him day and night, we're also required to pay him a licensing fee.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see how you can patent something already in the public domain.
And with how long JPEG has been around, you would think they would have raised the point earlier of the unliscensed distribution of their technology. That is, of course, unless the whole point was wait until everybody uses it and then enforce the patent.
If you want to enforce a patent, you need to enforce it from the beginning. Also, anything that is a standard needs to be released to the public domain.
This is obviously a scam. It would be interesting to see how it plays out.
TodayTM BillyJoelTM GoogleTMd for StitchTMes due to WindowsTM while RollerbladeTMing with an AppleTM and a PopsicleTM
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.
Maybe something of this magnitude can force everyone to reexamine the current patent situation.
Like figuring out why there isn't some sort of "window of opportunity" for enforcing patents or else they become public domain? For the sake of argument let's assume that this patent is valid. Clearly, these guys were aware that other companies and individuals were infringing on their patented material, and yet they did nothing until the market was so saturated with tools and equipment using JPEG technology that they thought they thought they could make good money charging license fees. They can't possibly say they weren't aware of all the people out there using JPEGs.
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.
The referred-to patent is owned by "Compression Labs," which is referred to as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Forgent. Evidently they are (or perhaps were) a San Jose-based company which did indeed do video compression technology; through Google I found a press release from them in 1991 announcing video phone products with AT&T and again in 1993 from AT&T's Paradyne unit. Back then their technology was called "CDV" (compressed digital video) and was, interestingly, described as "based on the MPEG standard." A web page at Cisco referrs to a Compression Labs standard as "proprietary" and distinct from JPEG.
It's worth noting that in their last reported quarter, Forgent made $15M from a "licensing program based on its still-image compression technology." This is coming to light now, I suspect, because two companies have already caved in and paid for use of the technology, the announced one being Sony, and this gives Forgent legitimacy to bully others with this stick.
As for mass revolt against the JPEG format, the GIF controversy came to light in 1994. Eight years later and it's still the most widely-used graphics format that provides consistently-supported (if mediocre) implementations for transparency and simple animation. The majority of web browsers in the wild still don't support PNG correctly (and virtually nothing supports MNG).
The patent dates back to 1986, before everybody and their dog was going around patenting every half-baked idea that fell out of someone's ass, so it's quite likely that the patent is legitimate (or at least as legitimate as these things get). The problem is that they've sat on this patent, not requiring licensing or enforcing it for the past 15+ years and only now, when every company on the planet that makes something electronic is using JPEG as their compression scheme do they decide to enforce it.
IANAL but I know that in order to be able to license copyrights and trademarks for a fee, owners are required to pursue infringement when it happens, otherwise they basically lose the right to the trademark/copyright. Is there a similar provision for patents? It's not like some bizarre little no-name company is the only one to have been using JPEG compression for the last 16 years...it's been all over the place. Shouldn't they have had to enforce this patent sooner in order to be able to license it now?
That said, this company (Forgent? Who the fuck are they?) is basically going up against Sony, Kodak, Adobe, Microsoft, etc. Are they really so stupid to think that these guys are going to just spread their cheeks for them without a fight? I don't think so.
E
ps...I just noticed this link over at El Reg that mentions that Sony already ponied up. Wussies.
There's one thing computing teaches you, and that's that there's no point to remembering everything.
--Doug Copland
Actually, that might have been doable while there were a few thousands of patents. Today it's pretty close to impossible within certain fields since the patents are overly broad and you dont know if they apply without getting an actual judgement in court.
Not to mention, a lot of corporations dont want their employees to do patent research (unless they're filing patents themselves); willful infringment (ie: saw that patent, didnt think it applied) puts you in a much worse position in court than infringing without knowing a patent existed at all.
If these people have a patent on DCT and huffman coding (which isn't likely to be valid if tested in court, but that's another matter), let's all just adopt JPEG 2000 as soon as possible. Wavelet coding is superior, anyway.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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!
IANAL, but...
This whole thing seems familiar, not just with GIF but with Rambus and the SDRAM/DDR standards.
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.
Rambus is still around, though a shadow of their former arrogance. (I understand that the people are still just as arrogant as ever, they just don't get the press.) In some ways, notably submarining and patent-stretching Rambus was worse. But at least once they had stretched their original art to look like it covered SDRAM and got it issued, they were prompt in filing suit.
It looks like this company deserves no less.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
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
True only of trademarks.
Contrary to popular belief, copyrights, trademarks, and patents simply do not work the same.
DNA just wants to be free...
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
You are missing the fact that the patent predates the standerd, and that C-Cube Microsystems independently created an algorithm that aparently infringes on the patent.
The final bit of this agrevating concoction is that Forgent recently aquired the previouse owners of the patent.
So, to sum up: JPEG isn't prior art for this patent, the patent significantly predates the JPEG standerd. The patent was applied for in 1986 and issued in 1987. The patent is probably valid. JPEG probably does infringe on it. Patents do not need to be defended to remain valid (though you may not be able to pick up damages for the entire infringing period if you weren't defending the patent)
Realities just a bunch of bits.
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.
So, yeah, you can patent math, just like you can now patent genes that occur naturally. It's a wacky world we live in.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
As did Geoworks with WAP. In the graph of GWRX's stock performance, can you find the point at which the suit was filed?
hint: It's right before the stock skyrocketed from the teens to its all-time high north of $50.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
If the answer is "more lawyers" then the question shouldn't have been asked.
Seriously, though.
Your contention is that SONY, Apple, Microsoft, Nikon, Canon, HP, IBM, AOL, Xerox, and every other company that engages in the fields that "include digital cameras, digital still image devices, personal digital assistants (PDA's), cellular telephones that download images, browsers, digital camcorders with a still image function, scanners and other devices used to compress, store, manipulate, print or transmit digital images" either failed to hire a Search Firm or did hire a Search Firm and then willfully ignored this patent?
Of course not. The file format was released as an open standard and Forgent is now attempting to cash in on a vaguely related patent.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
But, that will not save them from having to deal with all of the revenue generated by previous versions of those products over the years. That could potentially be a boatload of cash that these companies will have to fork over because of Forgent's decision to enforce their patent.
Two things could stand in the way of Forgent and the truckloads of cash they are dreaming of:
The gap between the time the patent was granted and the time of enforcement. We are talking about over a decade of time that Forgent, for all practical purposes, chose not to enforce their patent on JPEG encoding. There is a concept of tacit approval that companies such as Adobe could call into play when this goes to court. And since Forgent has stated on their web site that a "national law firm" is involved, you can bet this will go to court... soon.
Extending the concept of tacit approval, the defendants could claim they would not have used the patented technology in their products if they had known the patent would be enforced. The fact that it was not enforced, during a reasonable period of time after the patent was granted, makes this argument a solid one.
Forgent better hope that the national law firm they hired can claim a plausible reason why it took them so long to enforce this patent. If not, then it will likely be thrown out for all products using the JPEG format up until the date that Forgent decided to enforce it. If that happens, then the flow of money from this will be reduced to a trickle of what it could have been.
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!"
Nope. They both use similar technology (Splitting up the image into small blocks) but MPEG is not a series of JPEGs; it compresses things over time. For example, if a block does not change between two frames, it is only transmitted once. It's a lot more complex than this, and actually very interesting, if you have the inclination to read about it. Ingenious system.
Interestingly enough there is a format called MJPEG which, in fact, IS a series of JPEGs. I have a Miro DC30 capture card that uses MJPEG compression. Since all the frames are easily seperable (unlike MPEG) this format is good for video editing.
Justin
"Why would God give us a waist if we wasn't supposed to rest our pants on it?" - Rev. Roy McDaniels
I know that laches has, thus far, been restricted to barring past damages, but I don't see why this is always going to be the case. Past cases have dealt with circumstances where the infringer was (or should have been) aware that he was, in fact, infringing upon the patent; the situation is much different where a large investment has been made (say, building a factory) without knowledge of the patent.
If you wait for someone to build a factory before you bring out your patent, you are certainly prejudicing the case, since the existance of such an investment makes it much harder for them to avoid infringing upon your patent in the future.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
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.)
um, when apple suddenly demanded $1 per port they pretty much kick started USB2.0 and serial ATA and pretty much killed the notion of using 1394 as the HDD interconnect inside a PC. I was working in the PC biz at the time, I remember these things. I also remember the belief that this was a Steve jobs deal to hurt PCs compared to macs. well, he hurt us users.
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
That's quite true; one should make tea with boiling water, unless it is Chinese tea in which case one makes it with water around 180 degrees F. However, one does not serve it to one's guests at that temperature, since it loses some heat while steeping or brewing. One never leaves tea or coffee on a heater for hours, maintaining its temperature at 180 F until the moment of service; the subtle aromatics of either beverage will quickly evaporate, leaving a soulless and bitter brew.
Moreover, in proper society one does not serve tea or coffee in heat-insulating styrofoam cups. One serves both in china, which does retain heat but not quite as well as styrofoam. (It is because china takes on and dissipates some of the heat that teacups have handles whereas foam cups do not.)
One also serves coffee at table in an open cup, so one's guest can add milk or other adulterants. One does not expect one's guest to remove a tightly fitting lid first, nor to perform said operation without the stability and protection of a table. Presenting such a puzzle to one's guest -- especially a puzzle loaded with the gory surprise of a near-boiling liquid within, ready to scald the loser in this hideous parlor-game -- is beyond the pale of hospitality.
Thus, the standards of proper society for the preparation and serving of tea and coffee do not form a defense for McDonald's in this case.
As far as patents are concerned, Laches only applies on an infringer-by-infringer basis, and I'm pretty sure only (in effect) to back-royalties.
DNA just wants to be free...
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.
Does anyone else see this as a general tech form of the illegal Cyber Squatting procedures? Someone buys a domain, possibly with the knowledge that the domain will soon be wanted by someone with deep pockets, holds out until the deep pockets offer to cough up enough cash, and then sells. Here we have a company that claims to have rights to a technology, attempts to spread the technology as a standard so deep pockets begin using the technology (deep pockets = the public and companies developing products for the public), holds out until enough pockets are using the technology, and then claims rights to the technology and asks everyone to cough up. The only problem they have is getting at the individual user, so they attack the companies that service the individual user... but then what happens? The companies just soak up the loss, right? No we soak up the loss in the form of higher prices. This patent claim is complete bull terds, and I hope that someone (some company) will be able to prove so, as I would rather soak up 5 million or so in attorney fees than 15 million or so for every major company that produces jpeg creation and manipulation software or components.
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.
Why do so many people hate lawyers?
They hate what they fear.
Why do so many people fear lawyers?
They fear years of research and work being stolen from them because they are unable to work the system the way Forgent or Microsoft or BT or Amazon can. They fear some white trash bimbo is going to pour coffee on herself at your family restaraunt and suddenly your livlihood is gone. Or, perhaps, some redneck is going to slip walking up the steps to your house and steal your home from you. They fear being screwed by the people who are supposed to advise them in the intricacies of law.
They fear being rendered helpless in a system that ONLY rewards those with money and those with the most expensive lawyers.
You claim that everyone should assess their risk (using the tools that are, supposedly, "easily and cheaply available to everyone") and it's foolish "to put yourself in harm's way without accessing the likelihood of litigation".
I think the perception of most of the citizens of the USA is this: you are at risk for being sued at any moment of any day for doing any action at any time for the rest of your natural life and extending many years into the lives of your descendants. And, whether or not you take advantage of these "cheap" tools, someone can hire more expensive tools to rob you of your work, your business, and your home and there is nothing you can do about it.
Anyway, I'm sorry you lost Karma. I guess some of the moderators can't separate their feelings about the failings of the system from the postings of those that think it is worthy of being defended.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
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 don't know if one of the 750 posts prior to this hit on this point, so here goes.
The trick with patents is that they need to be actively enforced by the patent holder (not the police). Therefore, it is up to the patent holder to watch over the market and make sure no one is stealing the IP.
Now, like laws, patents cannot be selectively protected and prosecuted, so I cannot sue one company for using my patent without a license and not another... from what I understand is that if you want to allow a company to use your tech for free, you have to explicitly say so. If you don't, you're passive acceptance of it's use may imply a negligence to police your own patent, and it makes lawsuits around your patent that much harder.
Now, consider that this tech has been used passively by literally millions of people for years. I'm guessing that even if this patent is legit. they've essentially given up their right to enforce the patent.
The law is supposed to work this way for the very purpose of preventing ambushes. I can only hope that it works out this way.
Not all lawyers are "evil". It's that 99% of lawyers that ruin it for the other 1%.
cpeterso
...it'd be fairly easy to demonstrate prior use on all three of these patents.
/. but there's a ton of prior use there, too. Oh, well, I guess I gotta keep working.
In the same vein, I was going to patent making claims about patents on
Or, hey, how about a patent on claiming prior use exemptions on a patent? Wouldn't this allow a corporation to patent anything and make money on either side of the patent fight? Oh, shit, now I've done it...
Virg
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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Fundamentally there is nothing wrong with this. They bought the company and are now asserting their IP. Mind you they're working hard on commiting public suicide with the relations fiasco this is likely to be.
What I suspect will happen will be the same thing as Rambus. They will ultimately be forced to stand by the prior companies commitment to free licensing terms. Which is a good thing.
If it was the same company and not simply someone that bought them this would scream bait and switch and other sleazy things. Essentially now that JPG proliferation is the defacto standard they're now attempting to collect royalties.
All of this simply solifies my belief that the underlying fundamental OS should be open source as should the standards that allow computers to communicate. However proprietary software for programs and games is fine, within reason.
Standard formats for everything that people will use for business, documents, spreadsheets, XML perhaps...
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.
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.
They fear being rendered helpless in a system that ONLY rewards those with money and those with the most expensive lawyers.
IANAL.
Look at what you wrote. Setting aside your cheap ethnic bigotry that only "rednecks" sue anyone, do you really think that "white trash bimbos" and "rednecks" qualify as "those with money" and "those with the most expensive lawyers"?
This is how it works. Slashdotters, take notice.
If you Slip and Fall, or Pour Hot Coffee on yourself, you have what is called a tort claim (we will ignore whether or not these claims have merit). A tort is a legally recognized injury. You can sue for the tort of wrongful death, or the tort of fraud, or the tort of negligence. Your state's law governs what the legal requirements are for a court to find that "fraud" or "negligence" existed. What you are suing for is a) monetary damages, i.e. your hospital bills b) punitive damages, i.e. a monetary punishment to make the wrongdoer think twice about ever doing it again, and/or c) attorney's fees.
But most people, especially those who have fallen and can't get up, don't have enough money to hire an attorney by the hour. What is usually arranged is what's called a "contingent fee contract". Basically, the lawyer gets 1/3 of whatever is recovered. (That is why you see those "you don't pay if you don't win" television commercials for lawyers.)
What does this encourage? Dishonest PLAINTIFFS, not dishonest lawyers. Since filing a lawsuit becomes risk-free as long as you can pretend you have been grievously injured, it's worth trying your luck even if you have done something monstrously stupid and injured yourself. And idiot JURIES can be called upon to give ridiculous damage awards.
The system does NOT favor the rich in tort litigation. Sorry. All juries see is a bank account from which to give out a massive judgment. All attorneys see is that an endless assortment of greedy idiots will show up at their doors demanding massive rewards for self-inflicted stupidity. All lawyers do is facilitate the wishes of greedy plaintiffs.
Who is helpless? You were right, it's business owners (and anybody whom a jury might think could distribute big bucks to someone who tried drinking Drano to see what would happen). Do you notice the inconsistency in thinking that The Rich set up a system which screws themselves over?
What really happened is that populist legislatures, and populist judges, trying to DIMINISH the power of "The Man" and INCREASE the power of the "People", created our present system. Tort lawsuits exist, and were in modern times generally created, to favor the little man. The problem is that the balance swung too far. "Suit to recover because your employer has insanely dangerous machinery" became "suit to recover because your boss harmed your self-esteem".
What does this have to do with patent law? Absolutely nothing. This question of whether a company's patent on JPEGs is enforceable has absolutely nothing to do with frivolous lawsuits like the kinds you described. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the honesty of the legal profession.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Perhaps the best way to fight this stupidity is to entirely ignore software patents. Let them fuss and fume and try to take everyone to court as they scrounge around trying to get money for nothing. Once enough folks get peeved, maybe there'll finally be enough uproar to force an overhaul of our entirely broken patent system. Take it to the supreme court if need be to establish that algorithms are both protected speech and natural discoveries (ie. mathematics, therefore not patentable). Heck, this could even help css-cracking cases if that happened.
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.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10