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ISO Could Withdraw JPEG Standard
McSpew writes "According to The Register, the ISO is prepared to withdraw JPEG as a standard if Forgent Networks continues to assert its patent claims over JPEG's compression algorithm." I'm sure the JPEG committee would still be happy to hear of prior art.
No more JPEGs - ISO to withdraw image standard
By Andrew Orlowski in London
Posted: 07/23/2002 at 11:38 EST
The ISO standards body will take the unprecedented step of withdrawing the JPEG image format as a formal standard if Forgent Networks, a small Texan company, continues to demand royalties on a seventeen-year old patent.
The Register has spoken to representatives of both the JPEG committee and Forgent Networks this week.
According to Richard Clark, JPEG committee member and JPEG.org webmaster, Forgent's royalty grab - coming after two decades of royalty-free use - means that ISO is obliged to withdraw the specification.
"Under ISO terms, formally you can only have a standard you can implement on free or RAND terms. "Reasonable and non discriminatory (RAND) terms are typically published, and the same for everyone. It's clear that Forgent's claims are not RAND. $15 million doesn't sound like free to me, and Forgent is not publishing the terms of their licensing.
"ISO will withdraw the standard: JPEG will be no more," he told us. However, ISO itself cannot formally take a stance on the patent, he added.
"JPEG have traditionally tried to make it available for free; there is no JPEG LA, like the MPEG LA," he pointed out.
"Our current assumption is that the patent is not valid," said Clark. However Clark says that since the patent becomes invalid in 2004 (under the old rules, seventeen years after filing, rather than twenty years after a grant) there is little incentive for manufacturers to bow to Forgent's terms.
A spokesperson for Forgent declined to rule out litigating against manufacturers who decline to pay Forgent royalties on the claim.
License grabbers
Clark blamed the collapse of the "new economy" for unleashing speculative claims such as Forgent's on long-established free standards. Forgent acquired the patent in 1997.
"Typically cross-licensing has kept things in check - the holder was a manufacturer and not just a license grabber. But with the demise of the dot coms the only things left in the locker are bits of paper. And people are pursuing it fairly vigorously," he said.
Forgent's PR manager Hedy Baker told The Register that the company was in talks with a number of manufacturers. She declined to name the company which paid $15 million for rights to use "patent 672".
"It covers a specific method that's used in part of the process in a JPEG," she said.
"This is a licensing program: we have a legitimate patent," she told us.
But it's a very widely established standard and no one has tried to collect royalties from the transmission of JPEGs before?
"They only started delving into it a year and half ago when the new management team came in. We're speaking with device manufacturers."
But it also includes web browsers?
"Yes, it could right."
And everyone who's writing client side software that receives a JPEG?
"It applies to anyone who uses a specific algorithm. We are contacting device manufacturers," she said.
Would you litigate against companies who refuse to license JPEG?
"I really don't have information on that."
Was Forgent confident it could handle claims of prior art which invalidate the claim?
"We have the rights to this specific technology. There's nothing I can tell you about the licensing program beyond what I've stated.
But the patent expires pretty soon - in, 2004 in fact - so there's very little incentive for a manufacturer to enter into an agreement when two or three years down the line it's going to become invalid, isn't it?
Ms Baker declined to provide more detail.
No safe haven
Clark says he hopes the furore will help restrain European agencies from aping US patent law.
"It's becoming impossible to set standards in multimedia; huge numbers of patents are granted. In Japan there are 4,000 patents on image and wavelet technology alone. It's followed the US model, where for many, many years, the US has allowed patents on very small changes to very detailed technical terms and where the benefits are few," said Clark.
He advocates shifting the burden of proof onto the patent holder.
"Originally patents were a bargain to protect a little man with a brilliant invention. Now they're held by big corporates, and often extended beyond the lifetime of the product. He would like to see what clauses of a standard a claim applies to within six months of the standard being published; and for patent claimants to publish details of their licensing.
He would also like to see international agreement: "...but that would mean running it through ISO, WIPO and national governments, and I can't see it happening with any kind of finite timescale.
And there aren't any safe havens, he warns.
"You can't create a standard that doesn't infringe patents - PNG or Ogg Vorbis could equally be challenged. So it's no good saying something is patent free." ®
Just think of all the Pr0N I'll have to pay royalties on!
Am I the only one who thinks the ISO should stand up and fight the good fight?
Maybe this would be a way to stop this patent / Intellectual Property nightmare once and for all.
What about patents not applying if the implementation is open source and not-for-profit?
Well, I guess I can keep on dreaming... =(
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
So? I could care less about JPEG anyway. PNG is a lot better. Better compression and better image quality. If JPEG wants to get itself into legal shit then it's its' own business. My wallpapers and my website images are all PNG and thats the way it will stay.
If they bow, it lends credence to this silly claim... I say silly because they sat on the patent (knowingly it seems) and only tried to assert it during the zero hour. I doubt it holds up in court, but ISO is known not to reverse itself so JPeG will die. Damn shame... PNG sucks, GIF is obviously not a good substitute.
This just sucks...
Then we can finally make this a non-issue.
Its about time that a precedent be set in the patent-crap(tm) going on these days. If a company is going to assert its patents and charge people for it after so long, it is more than justified to play hardball and in essence say "we'll pull your patent-laden bullsh*t off the list of standards". Okay sure, the alternatives are there but disk-space/image-quality/browser support must be there before anything will work. Before anyone says that PNG works as a replacement, I would have to say that the size increase alone prohibits their use especially on high-traffic sites where bandwidth counts.
how many more times are we going to hear about everyone's p0rn rolayties surpassing the federal deficit?
I'd check JPEG vs PNG file sizes again before I'd say 'in every way'.
It'll be a new way for webmasters of the sex trade to make money:
"Our women are 100% patent-free!"
-Matt
--- Need web hosting?
Applaud ISO if they're prepared to take this kind of step. It shows that they're willing to say 'ok, stop' if people are going to abuse their patents on standardized things...though, to tell you the truth, I personally prefer PNG. ...Just wish that something like this had been done with GIF...
Just my $0.02
Since every image format known to man seems to be under the control of some kind of patent, I propose that the ONLY supported graphic format for all our web applications should be ASCII art, that way we should avoid all the patent mess, also ASCII art is probably the most widely available format and already has a module for gimp.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Jpeg is a STANDARD, doesnt matter about the patents it has. It has been STANDARDIZED through the test of time, I will grow to despise the new legislature. My digital camera can take either Jpeg or TIFF (tiffs too big) so i really dont have THAT Much of a choice. Image conversion is a pain in the ass.
no text, just a big ol' finger to the forgent.
I want 2D games back.
As strange as it sounds, this is actually a good move. We do NOT want jpeg on the list of standards if an entity can maintain patented control over it. Granted we will all still use jpeg, however ISO is definatly trying to make a point here - "you cant exclusively own it, and have it be an open standard" we should be happy that ISO is standing up for this!
So far as I can tell, this is what the ISO certainly should do, according to the letter and spirit of their policies. But I doubt it will have any effect on the situation except as a feel-good measure for those against the patent claim. I can't see how it will put any pressure on the dicks trying to claim patent rights; even if the ISO withdraws official standing, it will remain a de facto standard.
The ISO exists to promote formats and protocols as standards. It is basically a cheerleading group, which has its purpose, but not here. There is no way you can enforce true standardization. Nor can you pass a resolution that takes away a format's status as a standard.
HTML 4.0 only became a true standard when Microsoft supported it in Internet Explorer. Likewise, GIFs are still standard, despite the huge campaign for PNGs. And SMB is a standard for filesharing, while DOC is a standard for word processing.
JPEG is a standard because every graphics program and web browser supports it, not because of some gold star from the ISO. If the ISO wants to remain relevant, it needs to stop making these self-righteous and ineffectual proclaimations and start working on something that matters.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
If anything like this happens, it would obviously wreak havoc on the internet. We'd be forced to use clunky, bloated, Microsoft bitmaps. So, would owning your JPEGs now be akin to downloading Metallica MP3s, or cracking a program? This is worse than trying to copyright nothingness, or pop-unders, as X10 tried. -"Hey, you guys wanna buy some JPEGs?" --"If you get caught using that..." -"I know, I know, I made the original myself." I'm not really worried, mostly because of the last lines in the article, but in America, we do have stricter laws. But I've never seen anythink like this before.
We're Doomed
slack fuckers
ISO is a standardization body, it does nobody any good for them to get in the middle of a stupid dispute like this.
Putting moderation advice in your
The fact that they got the patent anyway is bad enough. How could it be that those who came up with the standard don't have the patent? All they need to do it stand-up and show some little evidence of prior use that would not be that hard to find.
http://www.maximum-cars.com - My little hobbie.
It's also about every device that captures JPEG (digicams) and renders JPEG (web browsers) that is big enough for Forgent to demand money from. Personal decisions to move to PNG are fine and dandy and probably will win you some personal satisfaction, but in the greater scheme of things, JPEG is more entrenched in computing than a simple "OK, let's just whip up a script to batch everything over to PNG."
does any one else think that this may be a bit premature? after all, they have merely said that they may have patants on parts of the algorithm. As far as we know -- an obviously we dont know everything -- they have not proved it yet.
In addition, what is the point of doing it now? AFIK there were legal limits on enforcing your patent after you let people adopt it.
Personally, i have nothing against patents but this does seem rather silly.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
yeah, I just wish more browsers knew how to support PNG's alpha-channel (making images partially transparent). Until that happens, it's just another image format in the mix...
Well now... if they are successful in doing this (with so little to really gain considering if the patent ends in 2004, that leaves them 2 years to try to clean up) then what is to stop Microsoft from trying to do the same thing with CIFS (SMB)?
I mean, they are already trying to put limitations and restrictions on the use of the CIFS protocol even as it's being reviewed by the standards boards.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
It's clear that Forgent is going after companies that develop browsers, sell image editing tools, etc., but on your typical Unix/Linux platform these tools often are "just" linked to libjpeg where the real encoding and decoding is done. In this case might they try to go after anyone whose name appears in the libjpeg sources? Ack!
...that it is time for jpeg2000.
Too bad this patent covers the whole spectrum of compressing images by removing redundant data.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
Microsoft to enforce ".exe" patent. Bill Gates quoted, "All your program are belong to us."
:)
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
I want this patent invalidated, then the companies that paid money to go after them for fraud.
Fight Spammers!
I own a cute little Canon Digital Elph that happens to save images in the formerly-standard JPEG format.
Exactly what happens if the patent is upheld? Am I personally liable? In theory, could Forgent come after me for royalties?
What happens if you buy and use a product that later on turns out to infringe on someone's patent?
Offhand I don't recall any language in any fine print anywhere that says I'm held harmless, it's all the vendor's fault.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
If it was patented in, what, 1987, won't it expire shortly anyway, like the RSA patent, in, what, 17 years? 2004?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Anyway, the issue at stake here is not just about whether or not JPGs can or cannot be used; if Forgent gets away with this, the door is open for all other companies to get away with submerging their patents and then springing royalties onto us. GIFs have been taken from us, and now it looks as if JPGs will be taken from us as well, and I don't think that it's a good idea to rely on just one picture format. I'd rather have choice, thanks very much.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
Again, speaking as an expert, Forgent Networks patent has NOTHING to do with JPEG. It is quite hard to find prior art for a patent claim that doesn't apply.
One would hope they'd just fight this nusance lawsuit in court.
Ludicrous claim, yes. There's no way it'll kill off the JPeG format. The files are too well entrenched into everything we do and litigation against companies with embedded decoders would go way past the 2 years left on their patent.
Though by all means I'd love to see someone try to sue Microsoft because of Internet Explorer. Just like smokers trying to sue the tobacco industry: wait the plaintiff out until he/she pases on from the cause of the lawsuit. 15 million is way more than the 2-3mil corporate lawyers would make off the case.
-Matt
--- Need web hosting?
Shouldn't the MP3 standard get the same treatment for the same reasons?
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
Am I the only one who thinks the ISO should stand up and fight the good fight?
The problem is the whole patent system. You don't fight that by overturning a single patent claim: You do it by rigorously applying the existing scheme. If that leads to unacceptable results, that will demonstrate the problem.
Nope, no sig
img src="images/front_page/logo_ForgentNetworks.gif"
Hmmm.... Wonder why they aren't using thier own technology?
Remember your heros!
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
OK, it's pretty childish, but if they say they own the rights to JPEG, why don't we send them all the JPEGs we can find? How many copies of http://goatse.cx/hello.jpg can their mail server handle?
According to this document utility patents last 20 years and design patents last 15. If as the article indicates this letigation is after two decades of usage in JPEG, then either JPEG existed before the patent or the patent is about to expire, if it hasn't yet done so.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Can you answer this?
If a patent doesn't specifically mention a process in the list of claims, but the process is described in the patent, does the patent cover that process?
The "JPEG patent" doesn't list the JPEG method, nor does it list a technical description of the method in the list of claims. It does describe the JPEG algorithm in the body of the patent. Does the patent cover the JPEG algorithm?
Cute.
The deeper in crisis the capitalist economy gets, the more idiotic its property laws reveal themselves to be; but I don't expect libertarians to grasp this essential truth for some time to come yet...
EON condensed matter distributed-computing project.
(photo of revolver up against dog's head) If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog!
314-15-9265
But they can only seek royalties or a set percentage of the profit's obtained by the use of libjpeg. So if you dont charge for the library or any product which uses said library, their cut of $0.00 would be, hmm $0.00
what if ISO threw a party and nobody came?
For line-art, vectors, and indexed-color graphics, png, gif [bleh], or svg should already be used, but JPEG is in wide use, and there isn't a replacement for lossy compression.
Slashdot poll time: Will people(companies) 1) pay attention to ISO 2) develop a new format 3) be a conscientous objector 4) move with CowbowNeal to a country without software patents?
Ironically, our saving grace may come from Microsoft, as they have the employees and the browser to implement any standard they want. They could develop a royalty-free lossy compression format, submit it to ISO/ECMA for certification, and put it in the next IE patch/upgrade within half a year.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
My question is: How exactly do they expect to get this enforced? If this is the "Patentsharking" move I think it might be, than the ISO only supports the case by pulling the standard.
JPEG has been "known" to be open for years - why shouldn't the ISO continue with business as usual, and place the burden of proof on the claimant, in this case? Could they be held liable, in the event of an unfavorable decision? IANAL, but I don't see how, as they're not USING the technology, they're just recommending it.
Or does the stupidity of archaic U.S. patent law cover that, too?
If they are really worried about it, why don't they get the pr0n industry to help with the fight. They have the cash, and most likely the most to loose.
Try to tell the fiends that they will have to go back to long image downloads after years of speedy downloads. I bet more people will get off their ass for this than an election.
Will somebody in their area please go blow up Forgent? Sheesh!
-F-
Did someone say an image format covered by the GPL?
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
Just fuck em.
They're claims are worthless, due to the fact that: (1) they had nothing what-so-ever to do with JPEG; (2) There is prior art.
Aside from that, litigation takes a while. In 2004, these patents expire. Odds are, there's no way in hell they are going to be able to go after a significant number of entities in this 2-year period and win cases. Cases alone can take 2-years.
This is just a desperate money-grabbing attempt. Besides, what court is going to grant them a patent on JPEG? That'd mean that the entire US government -- including the judicial branch -- would have been infringing on this JPEG patents and would owe billions of dollars to this shitless company.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Many posters seem to be missing the point. No matter what your religious view of other formats like PNG or GIF, the fact remains that there are plenty of devices out there right now, like digital cameras, (and so obviously will be for the next six months or so tas well) that produce JPG files. Personally I would like to see JPG replaced with a lossless format, or a least an option to select a format without loss and visual artifacts, but for quite a while there is going to be a need for software tools that manipulate JPG files. If this bogus claim is allowed to stand the effect will be that as software is updated it will often no longet support JPG files (remember how fast GIMP dropped GIF support?) It strikes me as pretty intolerable to have to revert to old software to use a camera or a clipart CD. This issue does matter, even if your personal belief is that there are other and better formats.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Forgent has no clue. They didn't invent jpeg.
I think this should be settled in court.
JPEG.ORG should win as a prior art and the Royalty
that was filed should be discarded.
Does anyone else have any other links to confirm or (more likely) deny this?
They're kinda like the Weekly World News of technology. You know, the people who brought us BatBoy?
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
I think this is another case that points to the need for (yuck) more legislation. There needs to be a new law, one that takes the concept of public knowledge and applies it to existing patents. IE, this case, where JPEG has become public knowledge, to the extent it has an ISO standard, yet just now someone comes up saying they have the rights to it because of patent X. As I understand it, you can't gain a patent on something if it's already public knowledge. They need to extend that to say if you have a patent and you make it public knowledge, you can't then claim the rights to the resulting use.
Basically, this is like someone patenting a water powered car, then letting everyone build there own because they don't have the money to have a manufacturing facility, and then 5 years later when everyone and their brother is driving a water powered car, you come out and say "ok, now you all owe me 10%". It's ridiculous, and criminal.
~ now you know
This should solve your problem with the ol' guy.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
NOT!
The old rules were 17 years from the grant. The new rules are 20 years from filing. Why is the press so brain-dead when it comes to understanding the most simple aspects of patent law? You can't effectively fight something that you don't understand.
3 of the last 4 articles on Slashdot were lifted directly from The Register. If I want to read The Register (and I do), I'll read The Register, I won't come looking for The Register articles on Slashdot.
Come on guys, how about finding your own news for a change?
(And don't tell me to find my own and submit it - I've submitted about 5 articles in the past to have them rejected, only to see the exact same link in an article the next day. I can take a hint.)
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Do you have absolutely any clue about what you're saying?
It's quite a good idea, actually. If JPEG is no longer a standard, then a NEW standard will be created to replace it.
Unlike the GIF/PNG fiasco, this one will carry weight simply because of the "official seal of approval" from a standards group.
It's just a real damn pity that Sony caved in and gave legitimacy to this idiotic patent. I'll remember that the next time I go shopping.
Look at what happened to GIF format.. you would have thought somone would have brought that up before they decided to press the patent and run jpg out of existance.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Do you have absolutely any clue about what you're asking?
What's so bad about shinny leather? Try to take away my shinny patent leather pants, and I'll slap you silly!
I'm not exactly sure I understand the "idiocy" of property laws. Only intellectual property. Are you talking about property in general or intellectual property? If you're talking about property in general, please explain.
Together, we'll beat the Forgent Friggers!
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
Just a simple question - do you have the slightest idea how much a patent case costs?
If you made software which did any work with jpegs, however, then yes... you would be.
The amount of software out there that does this is STAGGGERING... Personally, I just think we should ignore it, tell Forgent to go F*** themselves, and by the time they get around to really suing anybody the patent will have expired. Meanwhile, the big boys that Forgent did manage to get into court can countersue Forgent for fraud, for attempting to enforce patent royalties after over 17 years of it being royalty free.
If they had wanted their money so badly, they should have started enforcing it when they first patented it, not almost 2 decades later. What Forgent is pulling here is bullsh**, and even _they_ probably know it. Ignore it, and it will go away.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Since this patent will expire in 2004, why not hire a good team of lawyers and have them fight it in court for the next year or two. By the time the verdict is reached it will be moot, except for some patent breaching fines that would be retro active to '97 or '02. They already priced themselves out at $15 mil. All the manufactures can pay that if the patent is upheld.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This patent was filed under the old rules, which still apply to old patents. 17 years after filing is correct.
Lots of technical and environmental problems are solved by the application of vast amounts of nuclear power
What's with the GIF on the bottom left of the page?
.jsp :)
http://www.jpeg.org/newsrel1.htm
You would thing they'd all be JPEGS on the JPEG home page, no? Kinda like seeing a Microsoft page ending with
You don't actually have to be successful at stoping them, you can even just put up a sign that says "no trespassing" and that will maintain your right to introduce more stringent enforcement later.
A similar law but badly implemented law (at least i presume the same law doesn't cover both cases) is what results in authors habitually telling fans "no" when they ask about doing fanfiction, even if the author doesn't mind that particular person writing that particular fanfic. Allowing some fans to write fanfiction can (stupidly) cause them to lose some legal control over their work.
The ideal behind both being that you should not be able to "fool" the public (either intentionally or unintentionally) into believing they have free right to something, and then suddenly start restricting or charging them once the object in question has been taken for granted/come into standard use/whatever is appropriate for the object in question.
I would think that this is exactly the situation such laws were trying to prevent, and i wonder if any of them apply.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
The prior owner of this patent clearly did not defend it, did not raise the issue during the very public ISO process and IMHO effectively let it lapse. You can't buy up something that is effectively in the public domain, it doesn't really matter if the patent is valid or not. The prior owner screwed up and Forgent bought a worthless piece of paper. Now if corporate idiots would stop validating the worthless piece of paper and put up a smidgen of a fight so a judge can tell us what we all already know.
lets see what the dictionary says a royalty is:
Royalty: A share of the profit or product reserved by the grantor, especially of an oil or mining lease.
Also called override.
A share of the profit, hmm, share better look that one up... (cant wait til elementary school starts back up so I dont have to humor you like this)...
Share: A part or portion belonging to, distributed to, contributed by, or owed by a person or group.
So you must believe that they are coming forward with their patent after all this time because their feelings are hurt that they aren't being given the credit they deserve...
Bullshit Stymie... they are out to make a profit, you actually think they give a shit if you or I look at a jpeg image, wont stop you from using libjpeg however there may be no products which use that compression anymore...
If ISO takes JPEG off as the standerd then what will replace it? GIF's? What? I really don't know to much of the patent business but JPEG is use worldly and if it stops being the standerd then what will replace it with the same type of art format? I think that there are too many patent issuses going around and it is cutting off major business from doing there work.
Coding system for reducing patent redundancy
Abstract
The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for processing patents to remove redundant information thereby making the patents more suitable for transfer and storage through a limited-bandwidth medium. The present invention specifically relates to methods and apparatus useful in intellectual property systems. Typically, the system determines differences between the current input patents and the previous input patents using mean-square difference of the patents. These mean-square of the patents are processed and compared with one or more thresholds of redundency for determining one of several modes of operation. After processing in some mode, the sucessfully processed patents are in the form of digital numbers and these digital numbers are coded, using ordered redundancy coding, and stored in the database.
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
JPEG is a "de facto" standard, like the others you mention.. Which is to say it's in use, and will be used (probably) in the future.
On the other hand, it's ALSO currently a "de jure" standard, which is to say it has the "seal of approval" of a standards body, in this case, ISO.
There is a difference, and it has a lot to do with how standards bodies work and how governments relate to them.
The logo on the JPEG homepage is actually a gif.
...that 10 months after Gordon Matthews is desginated to "mine" the company's patent portfolio, finds the JPEG patenent and then he turns up dead?
Hmmm?
Gordon Matthews dies
I think Forgent better be very careful about trying to enforce its so-called patents on the JPEG compression standard.
They run the risk of running afoul of US antitrust laws. In the famous US v. United Shoe Manufacturing Company case (1941), the courts ruled that patents cannot be used to stifle competition--of which the Forgent patent may just do. This is the same issue that resulted in Rambus running afoul of the law because Rambus was using its patents on DDR-SDRAM to stifle DDR-SDRAM in favor of RDRAM technology.
Forgent won't, from what I've read, disclose who paid money for a "license". I am thinking, and perhaps I am wrong, that those who paid have their *own* patents and fear that if they fight this one, their own patents might be fought.
Just a thought...
Patent != Trademark
GET IT STRAIGHT
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
To: pr@forgent.com
subject: Important information regarding the matter at hand
Dear Sir stroke Madam,
I am writing to you to express my utmost contempt for your company. Your
attempt to put the squeeze on users of the FREE AND ISO STANDARD jpeg
format makes me sick. The fact that Sony gave you $15 million when I
can't even afford to pay my mortgage makes me sick.
Your company did not invent the jpeg image format. That was done by
people who actually work for a living instead of litigating.
All you have is a patent, which DOESN'T EVEN APPLY TO JPEG AT ALL, and
now you are ruthlessly attempting to enforce it.
Well I am going to use the jpeg format a lot more from now on. I am
going to release some commercial software that allows users to batch
filter jpeg images.
If you don't like it you can get frelled.
graspee
The date is July 11th 1992. The GNU people are once again safe from patent law... gzip has saved the LZW-hampered compress from kneeing the GNU project in the other groin.
...
... minion ... here, will pose as a new board member. After the deed is done, he will fake his own death, and in the resulting chaos, all blame will be passed on to him.
RMS is still not relaxed however. He knows the Achilles heel of his plan to free the hearts and minds of all thinking beings in the world is patents. Restlessly, he searches for an answer, but as yet, it has eluded him. Later that day, one of his minions shows up and senses something is on his master's mind.
Minion0: What is wrong, master? Has someone threatened freedom again?
RMS: Rest easy young minion. Today, at least the battle has been won, but I fear the war may still be lost.
Minion0: You can't mean...
RMS: No, no, my facade as a badly-dressed over-zealous hippie will not be breeched. Be assured that it is inconcievable for anyone to see past my BO.
Minion0: Phew. But yet, I sense something's amiss.
RMS: Patents may yet be our downfall. The dark forces has threatened us before with them, and soon they will again.
Minion0: But, cannot we impress upon the minds of our leaders the importance of this?
RMS: Alas, in that respect our actions will be in vain. Our only chance lies with being more wise than them.
Minion0: I was worried there for a moment... here, let me get the champagne!
RMS: Perhaps it is good that we rejoice in our small victory. But the lull will not last and yet...
Minion0: And yet?
RMS: The time is not yet ripe. Rest assured, this patent war, we shall win!
And so, after a brief victory celebration, the GNU people return to their secret identities of coders who are brilliant, yet in need of basic hygiene.
Yet RMS continues to plan, in the dark and twisting corners of his mind.
We rejoin RMS on April 1 2001, in the boardroom of a relatively unknown company named VTEL. The board members of this struggling company wonder what the darkly dressed stranger has to say.
RMS: My plan is nearly complete. One this is done, you will not only have saved freedom from certain doom, but have struck a terrible blow at the very heart of the dark forces opposing us.
Boardmember0: But, would this not cause us to become unpopular and even shunned by our families?
Boardmember1: And what if there are complications?
RMS: All of the above has been taken care off... My
Minion0: Naturally, you will never see me or RMS again after this meeting.
RMS: And so, we have prepared new identities in any country of your choice for you and your loved ones. We chose your company because it would make the least impact on your social lives.
Boardmember0: But this name change? Would it not raise questions to the observer?
RMS: Only to those who are free from the dark influences. Fortunately for us, our counterparts are oft blinded by the smell of money...
And so, we reach our present day. The dominoes of fate are all in place, and we can only hope that freedom will prevail!
Maybe you need a better dictionary because a royalty can be a fixed charge per copy instead of just a portion of the profits.
We seriously need US NO Patent and Trademark office. The objective of this office is to grant "no patent" status to certain technology. Thus if you are trying to use a new technology and are not sure if this technology is restricted by some creepy patents, then you can file "no patent" application. Once filed, the "no patent" will be published and if any patent holder has any objetion, then they should file a claim withina reasonable time (say a year) and must declare specific patent that may be getting violated. At this point, the filer of "no patent" must fight successfully to prove that the said patent are not-applicable or withdraws the application. If nobody objects, or all objections are thrown out, then the technology gets "no-patent" status. Once done, no patent holder can claim any patent on this technology.
...).
... should start this initiative.
This would be a strong boost to free software developers, standard organization and even many enterprises who don't want to find themselves surprised by some late patent claims (e.g. JPEG, GIF, SDRAM,
I guess Amazon, FSF,
If nobody gives in to their frivolous lawsuits then the patent is likely to be less defensible than if somebody does give in. Similar things happened for windowing in Y2K as well as many algorithms of wrapping around the century and finding dates in code. The bad news is that if a bunch of people pay these folks to go away then it helps validate their position and everybody could have to pay. Just my .02 worth...
This jpeg patent deal is like a storm. Sure it makes a hell of a mess but, when it's over, the world is fresh and new.
All you open-source types should realize the value of Forgent doing this!
This will pave the way for more mainstream people saying, "Hey! Wait a minute! I'm not going to get caught with my pants down again! You know, 'Fool me once...' So I'M switching to open-source software with appropriate licensing to guarantee that these scoundrels can't screw me again!"
In other words, situations like this and with Microsoft claiming patent rights on OpenGL will only encourage people to stay away from propriety, corporate-sponsored software and move to open, community-sponsored software that much faster!
Hip hip hooray for Forgent! They're scheming slimy dirtballs but sometimes those people, in their greed and lust for power and money, accidentally do something that'll just screw their own kind in the long run.
Is this just patented within the US or also in
other countries or International patent?
ISO should scrutinise all standard proposals by way of a declaration of patents held, then they wouldnt be in this pickle. It is their own fault if they dont check for patents.
Sony paid them so their hardware market is not interrupted by legal issues. Too late, it is already interrupted as buyers will find software for their wonderful devices refuse to support it.
GIF has patents, how much of the software out there doesnt have a license for it? we still use GIF today regardless of the patent.
End users/home brew software devs dont care, corps do.
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
Someone else may have published this but this would force people towards a better overall standard.
Also isn't there an open JPEG2000 standard coming out soon?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
The laches defense, applicable where the patent holder didn't defend against a known infringer, only applies to specific infringers that can prove that the patent holder knew about their specific case of infringement. It doesn't help other infringers that can't prove that the patent holder knew about them. Also, the patent holder has 6 years to take action against an infringer that they know about, before laches takes effect.
why do you applaud them? they aren't taking a stand on anything; they are just following their own rules.
If a standard is encumbered by patents, unless they are available on RAND terms, then it cannot be an official standard.
This is not them speaking out against anything, they are simply stating what they must do.
Subject line says it all...
Unisys will sue Forgent for not paying any royalties on the software used to generate the 42 gif images on their webpage.
.JPG image on their webpage (http://www.unisys.com/corporate/images/home/home/ content/main_photo_homepage.jpg)
While that is going on. Forgent will sue Unisys for not paying any royalties on the
When the lawyers have taken all of their money, both of them will declare bankruptcy and go out of business.
S.E.S.S.D.E.N.E.E.NW from west end of hall of mists
I think what we really need is a statute of limitations on patent suits, or something to that effect. That way, companies would only have a fixed length of time in which to dispute these things.
I also don't think there's any way the companies could win. It's a cache-22. They didn't care about it before, because they didn't realize how much it would be worth in the future. But if they had enforced patents and charged for it way back when, it never would have caught on, as we would have turned to a different free format instead.
"Inflammable means flammable? What a strange country!" -Dr. Nick, The Simpsons
I wonder what image format GNU.ORG will use on it's website, now...
As digital cameras get bigger and better, I've noticed many using .tif as the file format. Sure it is a much larger file size, but is heads and shoulders above the .jpg format when it come to serious photography.
The PNG format might actually be a substitue when it comes to regular photography as file size is much less important when NOT dealing with the web.
He was talking about the idiotic part.
I can't tell if you just like to argue or whether you have some kind of brain malformation that prevents you from seeing the obvious, so I won't call you a troll, though you may want to get a catscan to see if you have some kind of tumor or something.... +3 (Snide but humorous and incisive)
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
Speaking of not being clear: are we talking 'personal' property -- as in beer? Or 'property' -- as in owning media conglomerates which control 90% of all information flow in a country, or transnationals which own more wealth than whole mid-sized countries?
It's an old propaganda trick to whip up fear and ignorance about someone taking away your little 'freehold' suburban bungalow, when the issue has always been: why should an elite of selfish individuals be allowed to contol most of the public wealth and even use it in ways which harm the people who created it?
'Private Property' is one of those false gods which enslaves the people who pray to it. It has been created to codify exploitation. Applying it, fetish-like, in more and more ridiculous ways is only a symptom of a decaying system which can no longer find useful outlets for such practices -- which in the past at least expressed a kind of horrid logic.
EON condensed matter distributed-computing project.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
burnalljpegs
Sig ?
You elect representatives with the IQ of a jar of cheezewhiz and this is what you get. For our British readers, that's a non-nutritive cheese flavored milk byproduct used to make all manner of things taste "cheesy." Not connected with the idea of cheesy computers.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
hi there!
--h
Do they do anything besides extort for patents?
Does anybody know anybody who has contracts with Forgent? Does anybody have influence over that? If so, they need to be dropped.
The governments are slow to respond. This patent nonsense is ridiculous. What needs to start happening is "takedowns". A company like Forgent comes out of nowhere and demands royalty payments on something which has been in widespread use for a very long time on the assumption it was not so legally encumbered. This company never even contributed to the algorithm in the first place, so the argument that it's "fair recompence for fair work" is obviously bogus; it's nothing more than extortion which is legal under laws that are out of date. That company then needs to get spanked, and hard, and pubically. They need to suffer bigtime for their arrogance and their mistake. Everybody else needs to see them suffer, so that they will think twice before trying the same bullshit trick.
Anybody who is giving money to Forgent now needs to stop. Companies and individuals, or whoever Forgent currently makes money off, needs to boycott them, cancel their contracts. Forgent needs to go out of business, and it needs to be public and messy. We can't sit back and take it every time some piss-ant little technology-wannabe firm (a category in which I'd include Unisys nowadays) comes forward and starts claiming violation of "their" intellectual property. Somebody somehow has got to start putting these people in their place.
These parasites on society create nothing but grief; they do all sorts of damage to the community at large, getting rich themselves. It's no better than the behavior of the execs at Enron, it just happens to be legal. The system needs to be reformed; I wish our government would see their way through to doing that, but I don't have much hope. (Hell, our government is too busy going in the other direction with things like the DMCA, TIPS, and everything else that makes us so happy.).
Once upon a time, GIF was the #1 image format in the world, and it was free (although we all knew it was 'owned' by CServe. But then came Unisys and they pointed out GIF is based on LZW compression and so... GIF was no longer free
i flzw.ht ml
.png images yet, and indeed, what company will be the next to reap the benefits of the use of one of its 'hidden in the basement' patents.
See an intersting article about that here:
http://www.cloanto.com/users/mcb/19950127g
But even today, GIF is still used a lot (maybe only 1% against jpg, but I haven't seen to many
core dumped.
What's t say that some other lawyer isn't going to claim that thay have a patent on one or more of the algorithms used in Jpeg 2000?
The JPEG committee, which is developing the JPEG2000 standard, has issued a call to entities who claim to own patents on technologies necessary to implement JPEG2000 compression to disclose their intellectual property. The companies that have disclosed such patents have agreed to license them to the general public on a royalty-free basis.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I was just looking up the corporate info on Forgent and noticed that the CB/Director/MajorStockholder of the company is Richard Snyder. A quick search brings up several persons of that name, including a VC who started Price-Waterhouse in the '80s and later served as VP and eventually Pres of Gateway. I wonder if that's the same guy? ... Oh, and also the bass player for Captain Beefheart on his final album (Ice Cream for Crow)...but that's probably not him, huh? :-)
Sometimes I don't get our economy. Although I understand that companies want to make money and profit from their products or services, I don't get why some companies are at the public's throat most of the time. Don't the executives get that by making the public angry they're not doing any good to the company's reputation? Do they really expect me to buy anything that involves a JPEG algorithm after a scandal that they put on? If everybody starts pushing for patents and enourmous fees nobody will be willing to do any business, because nobody wants to be sued. I have nothing against patens, they're cool, they can profit an inventor to a reasonable degree and benefit the public at the same time. The companies that hold patents, should be proud of them and open them up to the public, after all that everybody will benefit from whatever they invent and chances are that they're going to make more money than buy suing each other.
How about I compress your kernel into an mp3 or jpg? How'd you like that, fools? Down with lossy compression.
In order for a patent to apply, all of it's claims must be met.
I wouldn't be so sure. A typical patent contains a plurality of independent claims ("A computer with memory and a first image source...") and a plurality of dependent claims ("The invention of claim 2, where in addition..."). If a device matches an independent claim exactly, it infringes the patent. Dependent claims exist so that if the independent claim is found to be obvious or not novel, the patent owner has additional inventions. In this case, any device that matches a nullified independent claim plus one or more non-nullified claims dependent on that claim infringes the patent.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Open source uses copyright to protect intellectual property. Corporations often use patents to protect their intellectual property. In the game of rock, paper, scissors, copyrights are paper to prior patents scissors.
Yes, there is a noticable difference in quality when using "Raw TIFF" as it's referred to in digital photography (yes, the same market that refers to digital file sizes in Megs, as opposed to any type of meaningful resolution). The problem is, that's on a $2K plus SLR body that nobody bothers using without a 1GB IBM Microdrive or better. That constitutes about 1% of all of the digital cameras made. The rest are point and shoot pieces of crap that the average consumer would buy, and they save in .jpg. .png just isn't compressable enough for the 4 MB flash card that comes with that kind of junk.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
No, that's trademark law. Patents are viable until the prescribed date they become invalid.
That's what I thought until I learned about the "laches" doctrine.
Will I retire or break 10K?
i smell a giant PR stunt
ISO is about setting and cotrrectly enumerating Standard. Those standard are sought to be RAND or whatever it is called. When it becomes proprietary thru the imposition of a patent, then it cease to be "standard" (or has to) and ISO has to jump in. ISO don't have to jump on to decide whether it is ethical or not, they have to jump to protect standard as matching a certain "quality" (in this case RAND agreement).
How would you feel if somebody certified part of the ISO 9001 or 9002 firm quality process, thus asking you money each time you market having "matched" a certain standard ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Results 1 - 20 of about 2,070,000....
well, you sure seem to have gotten worked up.
1) Go to Photoshop
2) Make Pixel Marking
3) Save File
4) Change file date to 01-01-1981
Bingo. Prior Art.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/17/124225 7&mode=thread&tid=106
There is a much better approach. We need to lobby our Government bodies to insist on using software that defaults to non-proprietary file standards (I'm going to refer to these as OFS(Open File Standards) from now on) as a first step.
OFS(Open file Standards) are a cause that we can get support from all computer users, as it benefits Linux but also Mac, Solaris and even M$ OS users.
A good argument to use is that the requirements to make information open and publicly available is discriminatory to poor people if the file standards require paying the M$ tax. An amendment to the FOIA(Freedom Of Information Act) at the federal and state levels is what to ask for. When the Feds require open file standards, Linux will become much more competitive. Once the files standards are open, Linux can easily succeed.
Be aware that GIF, JPG, are not open standards. Even PDF cannot be modified to add functionality. If Adobe decides to come out with a super set of PDF and collect royalties they have every right to do so. What we should push for is for the government (particularly the Federal level) to support open standards, free to all, much as the bureau of standards has done for units of measure (let's hope no one claims a patent on the meter).
Furthermore, we need to ask that all the extensions of government web pages be free of proprietary structures so that any browser will be assured of displaying the page content without depending on proprietary plugins.
(hint: read a little, then check out what kind of file they use for the logo at the top left is...
Great. First, laws are passed to limit guns. Now they're being passed to limit GNUs...
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...
Web Designers: You aren't artists and the media isn't the message. The message is the fucking message.
;)
Yes, I am an artist, I even have an art school diploma that says so
As for the second part, I agree.
This is the kind of thing that needs legislation passed to prevent it from happening. They need to come up with a registar for open standards, similar to the patent office or something. When a group comes up with an open standard for something they file the standard in this registar. If someone has a patent on something in the standard they should have like one year to do something about it and anyone involved in filing the standard should be unable to claim a patent. If the holder of the patent lets something slide through the registar for a year with out noticing they should be unable to get royalties for the patent. This would prevent consumers from getting locked into a standard then a jerk ass company like this from trying to gouge them.
If your not cheating your not trying. If your not trying your not winning and if your not winning why play?
I wonder if the outcome of this will be anything like what Fraunhofer(sp?) did with the mp3 codec?(And the subsequent development of an open standard, ogg vorbis)
In an ideal game of dirty legal pool, with large or unlimited funding, what terrible trauma could someone like IBM (or even the MPAA) legally inflict on Forgent to shut the company down and acquire their patent, assuming that the patent stands?
Debian has a bug filed against libjpeg62. It sounds like libjpeg62 has to go to non-US if the patent holds.
--TK
In principio creauit Linus Linucem.
It won't affect me much, as my systems are all built from sources. And most of the tools that can potentially do jpegs can be built without jpeg support. But it's sad to hear that users of binary Linux distros may be hurt by this.
As digital cameras get bigger and better, I've noticed many using .tif as the file format. Sure it is a much larger file size, but is heads and shoulders above the .jpg format when it come to serious photography.
.jpg is head and shoulders above .tif (as you give a passing nod to in your final statement). By your assessment only pics that make it to large prints can be considered 'serious'. Even serious photographers who print larger images will shoot in .jpg, offload to computer and convert to .tif before editing. Even the higher resolution cameras need to have their files interpolated by GIMP (or photoshop I guess) before printing larger images.
Actually it's only a factor if you're going to be tweaking the files or making larger (than snapshot) prints. For displaying on web pages and other computer applications
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Not true. I have a Sony DSC-P1 Cybershot that cost around $500 when I got it (it's disco'd, so it's probably less if you can find it now). It shoots at a max resolution of 2048*1536 and can save as a TIFF. That will print a good-looking 8x10 and an excellent 5x7. Granted, you can't hold more than a couple of photos on anything smaller than a 128 Meg MemoryStick, but the quality (especially black-and-white) is excellent for the price.
First of all every digicam ever made stores pictures on it's media in jpg or tiff format. Web sites use either png or jpg file formats, and since most digicams do not support png people will still end up submitting pictures to ebay using jpg. Basicly this is a case of trying to lock the barn after the cows have run off. I would also liken it as loosing your trademark by not inforcing it for years. In other words its too damn late now to try and collect on this patent since EVERYONE has been using it for too long.
I just took an 80kb PNG image from mandrake.com, converted it to a bitmap, and zipped the bitmap. The resulting zip file was about 50kb. I also tried the same thing with some PNGs that I had created for my website, and a similar thing happened. Conclusion: ZIP compression is better than PNG?
And let everyone know...
US Patent No. 3686520683635630535675273507357320
Registered by Nr Nemesis, about thirty seconds ago.
This patent is a new form of presenting digital images. Using techniques which you judges won't undestand, this process takes images (as well as all kinds of other data) and makes them smaller (a black-magic process that Mr Nemesis Industries has named "Compression"TM).
Since we now have a patent on the CompressionTM algorithms, we're seeking repayments from every company that utilises our CompressionTM services who have been stealing our IP for so many years.
We also plan to initiate a lawsuit following the recent acquiring of the Acronym CompressionTM standards - a complicated system (which you wouldn't understand) where entire phrases can be reduced to a few capitalised letters.
Our first suit is to be filed against the JPEG and ISO consortiums.
If the patent does hold, the only people that are going to be paynig for the royalties are large companies that integrate this technology into their products. The bottom line is that Forgent is trying to get some return on their investment in the patent they purchased. Yeah, this really is low, but legal. How is this going to affect 99% people on the net? Not much. Companies are going to pay the 15 Mil (at least the ones that use JPEG with their bread and butter products), a small few might be upset enough to switch over their format to something else (PGN, TIFF, whatever..), and the mass will just ignore it. 2 years later it won't matter.
They are trying to squeeze money from industry, not the end user. Even if they wanted to tackle every user out there with a 10gig p0rn collection, it will take more way more than 2 years to enforce it (if ever).
"I bet I'll get blamed for this." --Mayor Quimby
All this prior art stuff... I wonder if I could put together any patentworthy idea I've ever had and put it on the usenet encrypted... So anytime a phony patent claim comes up and I thought about prior art, I could point to my post at the google usenet archive and provide the key.
Would this help? And would it help even more if all of us would do it?
My venerable Canon Powershot A50 (~4yrs old) can save as TIFF, and 128MB CF cards for it are sub-$60
I don't know how that statement makes what I said not true. While I agree that for $500 you can get a point and shoot that will save TIFFs (that comes with what....a 16 MB memory "stick"), being able to print a "good-looking" 8x10 doesn't make anything more than a consumer model point-and shoot.
.TIFF format. The market demands a "good enough" lossy format. And PNG isn't it.
The fact remains that the average point-and-shoot users who has gone digital does not want to pay half the price of their camera to upgrade the memory in it so they can save in
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
Mind-numbing dork alert!
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
How is this a threat to JPEG use? Does anyone believe that people use JPEG because of the ISO? Or do they use it because it's a great and convenient way to store images?
I'm afraid far more than this is necessary to fix the problem, unfortunately this threat doesn't even amount to a slap on the wrist.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
the patent claims would invalidate the GPL license :-(
SUV's support terrorism !
Here's facts: .gifs. .gifs. .jpegs.
.png and all other
.zip, .gz, .tar, etc? Well, they are not yet popular enough.
.net... (The only issue is who reveals the card first..)
1) There used to be
2) Someone came up with a bogus patent and asked for money. => and got it.
3) we burned all
4) Then there used to be
5) Someone is coming with a bogus patent => and will get tremendous amount of money.
6) We burn all jpegs.
Guess what happens next?
The same people probably have companies already there for similar patents on
common image standards you can find.
The best thing to do is to stay with jpegs; the patent will expire very soon; they cannot use the same patent-card twice! They will be making HUGE amount of money with that wannabe jpeg patent; nothing can stop that now.
Companies just cannot stop selling their products, so they will happily pay all the license
fees required to use jpegs; whether the patent was valid or not -- it takes some time before companies can switch their code to something else to avoid the patent; but that means millions and millions of dollars for the evil empire.
What they really want us to do is to switch to other image format! They already published the fact that jpeg is patent encumbered LONG time ago, so that we would be ready to switch to another format immediately when they use the patent-card.
And of course png was developed and contributed to us as patent-free image format.
Once we switch to another format, the same thing happens again. Probably within 5 years when pngs are the big thing... The time it takes for them to redo the loop is exactly the same time as it takes us to switch to the next format! If we do it quickly, we're going to see another patent claim on "patent-free" image format sooner than we thought was possible.
They are using us to make money! And they are very good at that.
Are you already waiting for patents on
Are you hoping that stds committee can somehow fix jpegs by finding something that used jpeg technology before their patent? Does not matter, this is just to distract us from the real point and to speed up the loop. Not paying the license fees would be making a suicide, even if prior art exists. Crosslicensing is the only working way, and that will not help at all, if the company making the claim has no valid product on the market _currently_. (they can make the patent
claim if they used to have products on the market..)
(Someone should try patent the microsoft excel format... I bet one could get a pile of money from microsoft with that; Microsoft just cannot affort to stop selling their product while they're fighting against some tiny company in court..)
How about a patent on xml? Might work pretty well against
OK, I'll take the bait, since I'm qualified to respond. I'm credited on the PNG specification as a contributor, and I wrote one of the first (if not the first) commercial implementations of PNG, for a little company called Mastersoft that eventually got acquired by Adobe (via Frame Technologies). Your facts are half-right -- PNG does give better image quality by virtue of supporting up to 16 bits per channel (16 bits each of R, G, B, and optionally A), and by virtue of using lossless compression, but it does not give better compression in the general case.
JPEG is designed to use lossy compression, and as such, it can attain much tighter compression ratios than PNG can. In some cases, PNG can generate a smaller file than JPEG, but this is a corner case where the original image has a limited color space (e.g., uses indexed color with very few unique colors), and where the original image has abrupt transitions (e.g., line art, or art where regions are solidly colored). JPEG is designed to work well on photographic images, where continuous tones are the norm.
If we lose JPEG as an open standard, there isn't anything left to adequately replace it. PNG was supposed to replace GIF to get around the Unisys patent (GIF tax). JPEG2000 is too new, and there are too few software packages supporting it. JPEG2000 also requires the use of wavelets, and a lot of legacy hardware might be severely taxed processing these new images.
They can do whatever they want: you don't have the legal right to produce something if it infringes on patent A. They can charge a percentage, a flat fee, simply refuse to let you use the patent at all...whatever.
May we never see th
This is a good place to mention a project I am working on. I wasn't going to announce it quite yet because it's unfinished, but this JPEG news could change things.
I have modified zlib to support a simple form of lossy compression for images. The Lempel-Ziv compression stage works by looking for repeated strings in the data, and when a string is found just output a reference back to the previous occurrence. But what if this string matching allowed some deviation? More strings would be matched and the output file would be smaller, but there would be some loss of quality.
My implementation tries to do a kind of 'dithering string match' where it finds the longest possibel match where the total pixel difference (sum of squared differences of pixel values) is less than some given threshold. But the error in one pixel is taken into account when matching the next, so that one pattern of dithered pixels has a reasonable chance of matching another.
At present I just have the modified zlib and I am using it to compress 8-bit and 24-bit PNM images lossily. That is, with some reduction in quality I can compress a PNM image down to say 20 kilobytes, while gzip would compress it to 50 kilobytes. By adjusting the threshold you can trade off quality against file size (with threshold=0 you have plain gzip compression). The space saving and quality loss depend on the type of image being compressed. But the results so far are encouraging; with a bit more ingenuity in the matching algorithm it should be possible to do better.
To recap, so far I just have a modified zlib compressing 8-bit and 24-bit PNM images. I am trying to extend libpng to use this lossy zlib, but the trouble is that PNG headers should not be compressed lossily, just the pixel data. Also I need to deal with images that have more than one pixel per byte. (Although the results are still fairly good if you take a paletted image and convert it to 8-bit greyscale before lossy compression.)
I have quickly put together a web page Lossy PNG to demonstrate what has been done so far. I'm going away on holiday soon so I won't be able to make a working release for a while, but perhaps this proof of concept will encourage others to work on the idea.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
ISO doesn't wan't to pay licence fees, yet at the same time they charge us for everything -- i.e. downloading the c++ standard, etc. You figure if it's a standard it should be available for free to everyone who wants to view it.
Firstly, the money paid will presumably be passed on the consumer. Secondly, it means that companies are more likely to start using their own proprietary compression rather than JPEG, which reduces the utility of the devices. It's going to be a pain in the ass if you've gotta convert all your pictures into JPEGs yourself, rather than have the camera do it for you.
so if you abolish it like the soviets did, you will live in a happy, clean, perfect society forevermore...
err... yeah
Spanked hard pubically, eh?
My, you are kinky.
TIMELINE
1986 - Patent filed, Oct 27, Compression Labs, Inc., San Jose, CA
1987 - Patent granted, Oct 6
1992 - JPEG standardized ITU-T Rec. T.81 (1992)
1994 - JPEG standardized ISO/IEC 10918-1:1994
1994 - GATT ammended ("Ururguay Round"), Dec 9
1995 - GATT changes to U.S. patent law go into effect, Jun 7
1997 - Patent acquired by Forgent Networks
2002 - Patent enforced by Forgent Networks
INFORMATION
People have criticised Forgent Networks for not speaking up about the patent during participation in ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1, Sub Committee 29, Working Group 1. In fact, Forgent did not have the patent at the time.
The patent was granted prior to the GATT-mandated U.S. patent law changes to eliminate submerged patents. Thus the term of the patent is 17 years; therefore the patent expires on Oct 6, 2004, not "in 2006, 20 years from the filing date", as people have been claiming.
It is not the proper role of the ISO to take up a legal battle against patents.
CONCLUSIONS
Forgent was probably unaware of the patent at the time of its participation in the JPEG working group.
Prosecuting the patent after allowing the continued existance for 5 years of an international standard based on the patent is likely a violation of the RICO statutes.
Specifically, USC Title 18, Part I, Chapter 96, Section 1961(1)(A) and 1961(1)(B), "Extortion".
The definition of "Extortion in this case is from USC Title 18, Part I, Chapter 95, Section 1951(b)(2); specifically: (emphasis mine).
It seems pretty clear to me that this falls into the same category as the civil application of RICO to the RAMBUS patents, and to similar recent cases.
So, IMO, rather than expecting the ISO to get into the act, it's more likely time to involve your local Federal prosecutor, instead.
-- Terry
Their newsletter! why not sign up someone @forgent.com or any subsidary. And sign em up for a few other good mailing lists too.
Stallman, time to change that logo!
Just fill out this form. /. partners.
They probably need a few hundred
And maybe signing up for their newsletter might be informative too. Or sign up for some training so you too can be ready for the new era of imaging. Or create a "trouble ticket" and let them know about the problems you are having with their JPEG technology. Or get a quote so you can pay for that JPEG based digital camera you bought. And last but not least... Sign up for a job there... since they will effectively own you and all your jpeg files.
Interactive Visual Medical Dictionary
I agree with you on your point regarding "good enough" picture quality and low-priced cameras. I just thought you came off as a mite disingenuous by grouping cameras into $2,000+ SLR models and "piece-of-crap" consumer models, when there are plenty of "prosumer" cameras in the $500-$1000 range that offer excellent photo quality and color reproduction (albeit without the Microdrive or fine adjustments of a professional camera).
Even better is the Canon Raw (CRW) format that the higher-end Canon cameras use (G1, G2, D30, D60, etc). It just dumps the output from the CCD to a file. It's smaller than a TIFF image since it takes into account the subsampling of red and green. It is also independant of white balance settings, since it's only recording the CCD output and not transforming the color space in the camera and losing information.
My other first post is car post.
Yeah...I'm just snotty like that. ;)
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
Raw format is not an option for many because of two reasons:
1. time. Raw images take a LOT of processing power. Just viewing the damn things on my 1.4GHz Athlon takes 20 seconds. Also, the software from Canon sucks in other ways (UI) and is Windows only. That alone is a deal breaker for many here.
2. space. The jpg's from my D30 are about 1mb each. Raw format files are 4-5mb. I have taken 9000 pictures with my D30. Instead of 9GB of images I'd be looking at 45GB. That is not acceptable to me.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I found the parent post strangely amusing. I laughed out loud. KTHXBYE
Well, on second thought... :) Dropping JPEG as a standard wouldn't mean anything if there aren't enough viable alternatives. PNG sure is a very viable alternative, but I haven't seen too many PNG-powered websites so far. In fact, I think the sites I built myself are rarities. So dropping the JPEG-standard is one, but convincing ppl to switch to PNG is another... So, what are we going to do to accomplish this? Burn-all-JPEGs or something? :)
Woefdram, l'apprenti sorcier
1. Well, can't say much about the windows only, but I'm sure somebody could write a tool to take a directory of raw images and convert them to the format you want.
2. I've noticed that the jpgs from digital cameres (work and home) aren't very well compressed. I can often chop file size by half or more by recompressing. With no noticable loss of quality. There's nothing wrong with Recompressing images again after downloading them, is there? And there's plenty of automation for that.
The idea is to keep as much resolution as possible until you get a smart compresser to compress it.
I don't read AC A human right
The patent is valide in US, Japan, Germany, France, Great Britain and Italy, as explained here.
:
Patent numbers
US 4698672
EP 0266049
JP 63148789
The patent is 17 years old, and only now is it put in use. Think how many patents are given to software nowadays. According to the article, in Japan there are 4,000 patents on image and wavelet technology alone. Think of what will happen in 15 years, when companies start bringing out all-but-forgotten patents on everyday algorithms from the good ol' dot-com days... The devastation will be much, much larger...
I doubt, therefore I may be.
PING 64.132.236.73 (64.132.236.73): 32 data bytes
..........--- 64.132.236.73 ping statistics ---..................^C
/. effect.
37974 packets transmitted, 36559 packets received, 3% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/std-dev = 79.388/259.890/484.257/41.159 ms
mmm, take my jpeg's away will you? Ha, just doing my part to add to the
I figure every little bit helps, right?
Yeah, tell me how I'm going to "seamlessly and immediately" switch the FIRMWARE of my digital camera from using jpeg to png?
What's that you say? You don't want to write assembly for my camera (since I don't know assembly for that CPU)? You don't want to find the appropriate chip and burn a replacement for me (I don't know what chip it uses, nor if blanks are easily obtainable)? You don't want to physically dissassemble the very tiny mechanisms to install (wave solder?) the new chip in and reassemble it all so the optics path is clean?
You do, but not for less than the cost of the camera?
Well, then... I guess I can't "seamlessly and immediately" switch everything to PNG format, can I?
... and then, in an unholy trinity with .BMP files, they shall once and for all crush any opposition and reign supreme! Muahahahahahaha!
[What about companies] who have decided not to answer the JPEG committee's "call to disclose their intellectual property"?
If JPEG committee members refrain from disclosing their IP, those members are dropped from the JPEG committee (and possibly from all of ISO); just look what happened when Rambus pulled a fast one on JEDEC. If third parties who own patents on JPEG2000 but aren't members of ISO refrain from disclosing their IP, they risk being shut out of the market; just look what happened to Rambus's market share.
Will I retire or break 10K?
1. This page has a bunch of tools for manipulating CRW files in Linux. There is a converter to convert them to 48-bit files. I'm sure you can set up something to batch-convert them.
2. If you spend $2000 on a camera body plus more for accessories, you can spend $100 on an extra 60GB IDE drive for your computer. Anyone who buys that camera wants the highest quality images. Even if you're making pr0n and you will only post the low-resolution JPG's, you will still want the high-resolution raw files for archival purposes.
My other first post is car post.
no comment.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
This is really how it works.
Whatever prior art the committee collects should only be shared with companies actually defending a lawsuit unless it's absolutely the same in every respect. If Forgent knows about the best prior art, they'll be ready for it.
If they're ready for it, their infringement accusations will take it into account. If they are not ready for it, their infringement accusations have a higher chance of stepping into the territory of the prior art. It always looks bad when a patent holder describes the new stuff in the same terms as the prior art could be described. That's when the defending party stands up, exposes the good prior art, and says "Look, we're the same as what everyone was doing in 1975, and those slimy bastards themselves said so!".
Anyone who actually has to defend this thing hopes to hell that the JPEG committee doesn't publicly expose the prior art before it can be used to advantage.
Sure, as long as you compare an 100% JPEG to a PNG. There's a quality/size tradeoff, and the only way you get similar quality is by using 100% quality JPEGs (which are large).
Specifically, lets assume that *I* am sitting here as a private citizen holding a patent on some process of manipulating data.
Private citizens usually don't have the $$$ to take on a big business in the courtroom, and no lawyer in her right mind will take a software patent holder's case pro bono publico. The best you can hope for is contingency, where the lawyer takes a case on for free in return for a big cut of the settlement if you win.
Am I worried about getting shut out of the market? No, I was never in the market. This gives me a chance to hold the market hostage for millions once it's in wide spread use.
Your signature comes in handy:
I am trafficking in circumvention devices. 5 years jail $5 mill fine.
If it is discovered that you own patents that encumber a widely used standard, the industry will be able to use such trafficking to blackmail you into licensing the patents royalty-free.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The more data the more of a pain it is to backup. My current solution is using DVD+RW's. It's a pain, though.
As for the extra disk suggestion, you're partially right. I don't want to add more disks, because of heat and noise problems I already have.
Actually, yeah.
And why not stop thinking in stereotypes? It makes you a lesser person.
EON condensed matter distributed-computing project.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Actually, the soviet system still was very hierarchical and unfair. Statist marxism, especially the leninist or post-leninist versions, does not appeal much to me.