Forgent Networks Wins $25M from Sony for JPEG Patent

SuperBanana writes "A story at the Imaging Resource reports that Forgent Networks just won a $25m lawsuit against Sony, for unpaid royalties on patents Forgent bought back in 1997 for $65,000(there's a nice return); the lawsuit concerns patents on 'JPEG encoding and decoding', which Sony's cameras supposedly infringe upon. Sony is challenging the ruling. Older Slashdot stories covered this back in 2002 when this first popped up on people's radar screens, mainly when the ISO threatened to revoke JPEG's ISO status unless Forgent stopped throwing its weight around. Supposedly Forgent only has until 2004 to get all it can out of the patent."

Comments

Peoples first reaction..

[c_oflynn]

I bet there was a lot of people's reaction to the title that went something like this:

"I hope this doesn't change anything about my JPEG pr0n"

Re:Peoples first reaction..

[MrNemesis]

BWAH HA HAH I've just converted all my pr0n into ASCII art. Chew on that, Forgent!

Bad name

[Timesprout]

Forgent Pretty poor choice of name for a company with a patent for images.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget about open standards! I want to live in a world where more than 5/10 of the population are above average!

Sony's defense

[nath_o_brien]

They claim they couldn't read the "pay royalties" memo because it was a low-quality save and therefore too blurry...

My patent idea

[mark2003]

Can I get a patent that covers the application of coloured "pixels" of coloured compounds to a flat surface to be used as an approximation of my visual interpretation of the world as I see it?

Fed up about reading about bad patents

[harriet nyborg]

nice to see the little guy win one.

imagine if saddam hussein had a patent on GPS....

dear mr. bush,

i am the owner of Iraqi patent 01 entitled "method and apparatus for satellite navigation" issued just today.

it has recently come to my attention that your country is infringing my patent.

every night - and increasingly all day long - tomahawk and ballistic weapons with GPS guidance have been used in an infringing manner in many cities in iraq.

unfortunately, this patent is not available for license. we hope to be able to resolve this matter in an amicable manner, but please be advised that iraq respects patent rights and we will take legal action if necessary.

yours, etc.

saddam

Re:FUCK PATIENTS

[blancolioni]

Yes, especially the ones in the coma ward, because they can't say no.

Re:Shame on USA - Shame on Britain

[mofochickamo]

WTF? Iraq claims to own a JPEG patent. That is why we are going after them.

What next?

[Andrewkov]

First GIF, now JPEG? I guess we'd better all start using Windows BMP format!

I can hear their attorneys now.

[luv_jeeps]

All of your JPEGs are belong to us.