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JPEG Committee On The Ball, Seeks Prior Art

Posted by timothy on from the real-buccaneers-ride-patent-submarines dept.

Sangui5 writes: "It seems as if the JPEG Committee has noticed the recent patent fuss, and is working on the prior art angle. Good to know that even though there's a new standard, the committee is standing by their previous work."

10 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. <tool>This is necessary</tool> by MrHat · · Score: 5, Insightful
    From the original "Forgent" Press Release:

    "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."

    I'm not sure I'd even praise the JPEG group for taking swift action - I'd say they're doing what's necessary to combat Forgent's crime. Doing their job as a standards body like an officer does his job as a member of the police. Read that press release again, and try not to grit your teeth.

    If you want my opinion (and I'm sure you don't), a company whose business plan involves sitting on a patent for eleven years, then springing back to life to collect, doesn't just need to be stopped. They need to be prosecuted - for a calculated conspiracy to defraud the general public and standards bodies.

  2. They had no choice but to do this... by ndnet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The JPEG Committee had to do this. So what if there is a new standard? Without securing the old one, who would adopt the new one.

    They could say two things:
    1) We've got a new standard. Just move every image on the web to it.
    2) This is absurd. We're going to fight this, but if all else fails, slowly adapt the new standard.

    At least now, with option number two, they maintain credibility, as they don't have unreasonable expectations.
    Also, a bit off-topic, but is there any real competition for a web photo-quality image format? PNG is an obvious GIF killer and is slightly entrenched (IE, has browser support), but JPEG2000 isn't as far as I know.

  3. Besides the obligitory "Forgent-ery" joke... by Tokerat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Their patent describes a technique for digital video compression that uses some of the same mathematical techniques as JPEG, only their method requires more than one frame to be present to offer any significant compression (so I have been told).

    If that is true, that alone should be enough to tell Forgent to piss off.
    IANAL

    --
    CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
  4. Something I don't get. by Picass0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I know that in trademark law, if a company fails to vigorously enforce a trademark they lose claim to it. The effect of this is McDonald's sometimes sues a little family restarant called McDonald's and other strange insane lawsuits.

    Does this same thing not apply to patent law at all? A company has a patent, allows it to be deluted, and then goes after everybody. In trademark law, this would be thrown out of court.

    Now you could say "Trademarks and Patents are two different things" but they are really aren't. And so I'd like a laywer to explain to me WTF gives companies the right to broadside tech firms every few months with bullshit patent claims.

    1. Re:Something I don't get. by seebs · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, they really *are* different. Maybe they shouldn't be, but they *are*.

      Be glad the IP laws are different - otherwise, the owners of books and movies *WOULD* be legally obliged to sue fanfic writers.

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    2. Re:Something I don't get. by g4dget · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Be glad the IP laws are different - otherwise, the owners of books and movies *WOULD* be legally obliged to sue fanfic writers.

      First of all, many claims against fan fiction are based on trademarks. However, if the trademarks are used in a non-commercial way, things get murky with regard to having to enforce the trademark.

      Second, I think it would be good if companies were required to enforce all of their IP claims quickly and fully. Then, writers of fan fiction would have clarity, and companies would be force to make a choice. Does company X want a thriving communities of fans, or do they want tight control of their "property"? Right now, they have people enhance the value of their property, but then they go after them when a buck is to be made.

      Strict enforcement of laws is good even if you disagree with the laws: it is only through strict enforcement that the general public sees why some laws don't make sense.

  5. Some thoughts and questions by cout · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1) Patent 4,698,672 can be searched for at http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/srchnum.htm. The URL is too long to paste here.

    2) The jpeg.org page seems to indicate that the patent only affects the baseline implementation of JPEG. If this is true, then it should be possible to write a new baseline implementation that doesn't infringe on the patent.

    3) I'm curious what prior art will show up. In 1986, many people were still using BSAVE/BLOAD to store images.

  6. Re:Prior Art? by CrazyDuke · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Idea!

    Google has usenet posts from wayback when-the-fsck. There may be prior art there even though any binary encodes will probably be blown out.

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
  7. Software patents should be abolished by elliot_leonard · · Score: 4, Insightful
    If software patents become widespread, I can easily imagine a situation where one violates 100 patents just to write an extremely trivial program. Computer software is a very evolutionary art form. Every program written owes a large debt to previous developments. We are fortunate that up until recently, almost all software innovation was done in a climate largely free of patents. I sometimes wonder what things would be like if Apple had won its patent fight with Microsoft over Windows.

    I used to write software for a very large corporation. We were frequently encouraged to file patents for anything that we invented. We were rewarded even if our patent application was rejected. A successful patent application was a big deal. The corporation was quite sensibly trying to build up its portfolio of patents.

    Eventually, you may have to work for some big corporation to write software. Only someone with a big software patent portfolio will be in a position to cross license with the other big players and thereby receive legal permission to use a basic set of key patents. I expressed this concern to a lawyer at Unisys, and his response was basically 'So what?'. He said that he thought that this had already happened in the chemical industry.

    I guess that I was something of a crackpot to voice these views inside the big corporation where I worked. It was very encouraging to find out that the folks at the League for Programming Freedom(http://lpf.ai.mit.edu) share my reservations about software patents.

  8. I wonder by Eric+Damron · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Would a "Prior Art" angle work for OpenGL? As most of you probably know Microsoft is claiming IP rights over parts of OpenGL. You just know that when the time is right they'll try to use any rights that they have to hurt Linux. The time will probably come when the gaming industries decides that Linux is a viable market.

    --
    The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!