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.

Comments

Oh NO!!!!

[rgsmith]

Just think of all the Pr0N I'll have to pay royalties on!

Re:Oh, please...

[Tayto]

Fight what good fight? Forgent broke no laws. Ethically they may be far from clean, but there is no case to be fought here in the courts. Perhaps it can be used to highlight the futility of patents in the public mind, and to other governments around the world - but as it stands, patents are too entrenched in the US for anything to remove them.

The only thing that could improve the situation is that the MPAA find that patents are beginning to eat into their profits, and get their pet senators into action ;-)

My proposition

[SpanishInquisition]

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.

This is a Good Thing(tm)

[smashr]

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!

Re:This is a Good Thing(tm)

[SirSlud]

-2 for a lack of understanding in social dynamics. Like a flock of birds, humans need to generally be aware that we all agree on something (JPEG is not worth using anymore) before they actually _DO_ something about it.

So no, whining isn't a bad thing, because, if one year down the road our social collective asserts that JPEGs time has come due to the groundword of people expressing dissatisfaction with it now, it will be much easier to move to something else in one fell swoop.

Being a martyr can be useful, but more often its useless. Education takes time, but our actions are far more effective once everybody is on the same page.

Re:This is a Good Thing(tm)

[Baki]

What nonsense:

First, PNG is no alternative for JPEG since JPEG, being lossy, compresses much better (which is needed for certain applications such as photography).

Second, you cannot expect the whole world to switch away from very widely used protocols/standards each time some company claims to hold some patent.

If anything, this issue shows how bad, dangerous, damaging software patents are. They cause lots of economic damage, and could lead to illogical behaviour (it is illogical to launch an enormous migration effort for such reasons) wasting lots of money and human resources. It is very good that ISO makes a point here. That has nothing to do with a so called slashdot mentality (as if ISO would suffer from such).

Re:This is a Good Thing(tm)

[mosch]

My exact words were that you should attempt to make a switch to PNG. If such a switch is not practical for your content, then clearly this isn't a good option. Nowhere did I suggest that you should induce suffering or death upon yourself over some JPEG-related patents.

Whining is a bad thing, because habitual complaints put the attention of the complainers, not the problem itself. 1,000 posts noting the state of the patent system, corporate greed and a lack of ethics in modern society will not get us royalty-free jpegs, end microsoft's desktop monopoly, cause the RIAA to support P2P, cause the MPAA to support transferable digital video content, allow musicians to get paid, prevent violations of the GPL or give you a way to overclock your Celeron 300 to be faster than a daul Athlon MP 2100+.

On the other hand, discussions about possible solutions for each issue, methods to educate the public about the problem and methods to enact action at a local level can make a difference. Perhaps somebody here works for a corporation of sufficient size and influence to get proper PNG support in the next version of IE. Perhaps somebody here has been thinking about implementing support for another graphics format in mozilla, and might be driven to take that step.

It's impossible to know what could be accomplished if slashdot attempted to direct the energy it spends mindlessly whining at analyzing the problems the community has identified, and analyzing possible solutions.

Whining on slashdot is masturbation, it may be fun but it doesn't change anything. Pretending otherwise is as unrealistic as my hope that this post may inspire a rational discussion as to what the realistic remedies to this situation are, and what the full impact of this situation really is.

After all, perhaps somebody could talk to these folks and get them to license the patent for free to open source software, thus garnering good will, and they could then just milk the PhotoShops and such of the world.

Of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

So what?

[dlek]

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.

It's not just about your personal preference

[theRhinoceros]

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."

Re:It's not just about your personal preference

[Neon Spiral Injector]

People always mention the move to PNG as a solution to the JPEG patent problem. PNGs and JPEGs are targeted at different uses. PNGs are lossLESS, JPEGs are lossY. Take a photograph of a forest scene, save it at a PNG then convert it to a JPEG, look at the file sizes. Even a 90% quality JPEG is going to be smaller. But the PNG image is the one you are going to want to do your editing work on as repeat saves are not going to degrade the quality. But a 1600x1200 PNG with lots of small details will run around 1 MB, not something you want to have 100s of in your online photo collection.

libjpeg? Linux distros?

[shoppa]

How does this affect libjpeg, which comes as part of nearly (OK, not in my favorite, Linux From Scratch) every Linux distribution?

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!

In other news...

[Real World Stuff]

Microsoft to enforce ".exe" patent. Bill Gates quoted, "All your program are belong to us."

:)

Too late.

[www.sorehands.com]

Even if the ISO turns JPG into a non-standard, it is in too much use to make a difference. The idea of a standard is to establish the common use and give people safety in having a known way to implement/work with this "standard." This is already done. Forgent has already stole this benefit!

I want this patent invalidated, then the companies that paid money to go after them for fraud.

My camera uses .jpgs... am I personally liable?

[dpbsmith]

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.

What is it with you PNG fanatics?

[Dthoma]

You people are all saying "Just switch to PNG" as if it can be done seamlessly and immediately. This is ridiculous. Many images on the Internet are in JPG format. Even assuming people could immediately switch to PNG, this wouldn't solve the problem because JPEG is actually a format where the amount of compression applied to pictures can be varied on a scale of 0 to 100. The amount of compression cannot be fine tuned as well with a PNG image.

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.

Prior Art For What?

[StevenMaurer]

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.

Re:Prior Art For What?

[Sangui5]

They're not claiming ownership of all of JPEG.

They're claiming that the lossless table-based huffman coding that JPEG does *after* the DCT and quantization steps is covered by their lossless table-based huffman/RLE coding.

Not that this makes their claim valid--there is likely prior art for such use of Huffman codes, and the original patent holder was a member of JPEG in the late 80's, and therefore obligated to mention their patent then.

Please stop saying that the patent has nothing to do with JPEG. If rather than reading the crappy html claims, you read the full TIFF version, it becomes clear that their patent is somewhat relevant to JPEG. The more interesting stuff in the patent isn't applicable to JPEG, but the lossless transform they use is.

Re:Prior Art For What?

[Sangui5]

Lossless JPEG is a very unusual beast, and didn't get finalized until much later than lossy JPEG. It works according to much different principles.

Lossy JPEG transform the data such that you can easily throw away unimportant parts, and then runs a lossless coder to shrink it. By removing the unimportant parts, you make lossless coding step very efficient. Lossless JPEG tries to predict what the picture will be based off of earlier pixels. Since the predictions are usually close, you can then use fairly few bits to store the difference between the prediction and actuallity, thereby saving space, although not nearly as much as lossy.

The claims verses standard JPEG are shaky. I'd think that the claims verses lossless are much shakier.

Either way, looking for prior art in the form of old JPEGs is a waste of time. The publication of the spec itself would constitute prior art, except that it isn't old enough. And prior to the spec, there were no JPEGs. So no old JPEGs are old enough.

If you do want a replacement for lossless JPEG, JPEG2000 is quite good. In lossy mode it doesn't have nearly the problems with artifacting that JPEG does. Rather than get blocky, images tend to become progressively blurier. It also has a full lossless mode that gets very good compression ratios, and unlike lossless JPEG, is sane.

Re:Prior Art For What?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I checked to see what types of JPEGs I've got, and they're all of naked women. Will I have to pay royalties?

Re:Prior Art For What?

[Zeinfeld]

Again, speaking as an expert, Forgent Networks patent has NOTHING to do with JPEG [slashdot.org]. It is quite hard to find prior art for a patent claim that doesn't apply.

Well that may be true, however having had experience of this type of blood sucking weasel facts of that sort do not necessarily do you any good.

Entrust spent $2 million defeating an absolutely crap patent claim by surety. It was so bogus that the prior art for the claim existed in a 1978 MIT Masters Thesis that is extensively referenced (the thesis is credited with inventing the term digital certificate). However it cost Entrust something like $2 million to defend the claim (and Surety paid a similar amount).

The underlying problem here is that not only does the US have a corrupt patent system, but the legal system allows spurious claims to be made that cost imense amounts to defend without risk to the party making the claim.

Nodoby would litigate this type of claim in Europe because the most likely outcome would be that the plaintif would end up paying the costs of the case.

Two decades!?

[Midnight Thunder]

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.

Re:Two decades!?

[Kalten]

That's correct for newer patents--utility patents expire 20 years from the date of the patent application.

Under the older system, however, patents expired 17 years from the date the patent was granted. ISTR that expiry of the JPEG "patent" is covered under that system, rather than the newer one.

Re:PNG

[RobLS]

Are you sure about that?

What if PNG is challenged - will your viewpoint stand?

Over the last few years thousands of patents have been granted, the bulk of which probably shouldn't have - especially in software that has such a massive worldwide explosion in new "inventions" which the orignal authors have not patented - then 10 or 20 years later someone patents it.

The patent office (who make their money from granting patents) don't have the time or the inclination to do a full search - especially when most of the source is hidden from view - it's not just book publishing or visible inventions that need to be searched. But of course, that is an impossible task (and probably breaking a few license agreements plus the DCMA to boot).

So what will this do? Well, the file formats will be published by big corporations who have a large portfolio to challenge other companies. Other people will not be able to risk publishing their formats or their source code. So the world loses - and that includes corporations who are just too blind to see it yet.

Is this really the intention of IP laws? I don't think so.

Regards
Rob Probin

like it or not, JPG support is important

[frovingslosh]

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.

Since this is the Register, after all.....

[JohnTheFisherman]

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?

Re:Since this is the Register, after all.....

[JabberWokky]

The Register is written in a light, almost flippant tone. They often refer to themselves and make very clear what their opinion is on a subject, even predicting how they feel various news items will affect the industry.

They do not, however, fabricate news. When they report on rumors and venture forth theories and conjecture, they phrase it clearly as such. That places them quite a bit ahead of other tech news sources such as CNet and ZD. They also have the very good online journalistic habit of quoting or linking to the entire original source without editing it down. While editing down the original makes sense for a print publication, online publications have no real reason to.

--
Evan

Patent Priveleges

[Uttles]

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.

Re:Patent Priveleges

[Quarters]

That's already there. The law on patents is that if you don't act to enforce the patent for a sufficient period of time, the patent becomes unenforceable.

No, that's trademark law. Patents are viable until the prescribed date they become invalid. The lifespan of a patent differes depending on the type of patent it is.

If what you are saying is true then there could be no such thing as "submarine" or "submerged" patents, which is what is going on here. The patent is 17 years old and just now Forgent (new owners of said patent) are wanting royalties from everyone using it. This tactic is being used more frequently by businesses (see any article on the RAMBUS debacle).

Patents do not become invalid due to lack of enforcement. Patent holders don't have to do anything to protect their patents. By law it is 100% the responsibility of inventors to make sure their inventions are not infringing on other's patents. All the patent holder has to do is look for infringements and either work out a licensing agreement with the offender or sue them.

I'm not advocating the system, as I personally feel the trademark law of owner-enforcement requirements to be much better. I'm just pointing out that your statement isn't correct.

Re:This could just mean...

[SnapShot]

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?

A search on patents using "image AND compression" at the US Patent office returned 21314 hits for 1996 through 2002, 6592 from 1991 through 1995, and 3741 from 1986 through 1990. That's a total of 31647 patents in 12 years.

Are you trying to tell me that there is nothing in the Jpeg 2000 specification that couldn't be shoehorned to fit within one of these 31 thousand patents given a sufficiently unscrupulous company and a technically clueless judge???

My new patent (Abstract)

[stinkydog]

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

Forgent runs a potential antitrust risk

[MtViewGuy]

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.

Re:Oh, please...

[Sangui5]

Am I the only one who thinks the ISO should stand up and fight the good fight?

It isn't in any way ISO's job to fight patents.

The JPEG people (remember, JPEG is the Joint Photograpphic Experts Group, not just a compression standard) are the ones who will fight the good fight--them and their members. JPEG itself can only do inexpensive things, and probably couldn't force a lawsuit even if they had the money. What they can do is organize their members (who do have money) into working together in the pursuit of evidence that the patent claims are invalid. which is what they are doing .

What about patents not applying if the implementation is open source and not-for-profit?

There is a relatively new area of law, equitable estopple (spelling? eh, IANAL, so don't need to write it), which covers this. In this situation it more or less says that given that the owners of the patent knew (or should have known) that their tech was being incorporated into a free standard, they should have spoken up then, and can't now. Letting someone incorporate your IP into a standard, and letting them believe that they hadn't, is a no-no. Refusing to let them use it is OK, but you have to speak up quickly.

Additionally, there is the defense of laches, which more generally covers not enforcing a patent for a long time. If, given you had been reasonably diligent, you would have been aware of infringement (or you actually were aware), and you do nothing for a long time (6 years is the standard, more or less by situation), then you forfeit your enforcement rights for past infringement. A quote I saw on it went like "Those who sleep on their rights can't expect to exercise them."

Re:US only?

[ZaneMcAuley]

What is Adobe's stance on this issue with Photoshop? Did they pay a for a license?

What is MS's stance on this for IE? Did they pay for a license?

What about Mozilla? Are they going to pay for a license?

Re:No

[Quarters]

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.

As I understand it, Forgent was not the original patent holder. They purchased the patent just a few years ago. If that is true then your ire is misplaced. The anger should be directed at the original patent holder who was nice enough to let people use it royalty free but didn't include any "must be used royalty free in perpetuity" clause in the patent-sale documentation.

This will be settled in the courts ;)

[Mr Slushy]

Unisys will sue Forgent for not paying any royalties on the software used to generate the 42 gif images on their webpage.

While that is going on. Forgent will sue Unisys for not paying any royalties on the .JPG image on their webpage (http://www.unisys.com/corporate/images/home/home/ content/main_photo_homepage.jpg)

When the lawyers have taken all of their money, both of them will declare bankruptcy and go out of business.

The wrong way of doing business.

[$criptah]

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.

Re:Oh, please...

[Zeinfeld]

Fight what good fight? Forgent broke no laws. Ethically they may be far from clean, but there is no case to be fought here in the courts. Ethically they may be far from clean, but there is no case to be fought here in the courts.

That remains to be seen.

It is far from clear that a party may legally make a demand for payment on the basis of a spurious IP claim.

The claim that a party has paid $15 million to buy a patent license sounds very fishy to me. It is considerably greater than would normally be paid in that situation.

There is certainly a claim to be fought in the courts. The various manufacturers who have been targetted by begging letters from Forgent are likely to have many legal defenses. It is highly unlikely that a case will be heard before the patent expires in 2004 however.

Re:Does it matter much anyways??

[Kredal]

and you don't think the big company is gonna pass the buck on to you, the end user?

There's nothing to adequately replace JPEG

[LionMage]

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.

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.

Timeline, information, conclusions

[tlambert]

There seems to be a lot of misunderstandings around this issue, so someone should put out a timeline and other information. I also can not resist drawing some conclusions.


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:

The term ''extortion'' means the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.

(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

The scary thing...

[plaa]

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...