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

Fed up about reading about bad patents

[nattt]

The patent system is increasingly under abuse, and the US Patent office will allow anything through. It's past time for a revamp of the whole system, the removal of a lot of patents and make some areas un-patentable again.

Re:Fed up about reading about bad patents

[dougmc]

The patent system is increasingly under abuse, and the US Patent office will allow anything through.

As much as I agree with you, I'm not sure that this idea really apply here. If the patent in question expires next year, that means it was granted in 1987 or earlier. When JPEG encoding first `came out', it was pretty revolutionary, and probably even fit the `not obvious to the layperson' rule that the patent office so often ignores. If the original creator of the JPEG process is the one who patented it, then I'd say it's a valid patent. (of course, if he agreed not to enforce it so it could become an ISO standard, that's another matter.)

Though what seems to happen more often is that somebody comes up with something clever, and may or may not patent it. Then somebody else comes along, and either patents the original idea (if not patented) or patents it being used in all kinds of obvious ways (like `doing X ... on a computer' was pretty popular a few years ago.)

Patent reform wouldn't be nearly so important if the patent office could simply follow it's own rules -- i.e. checking for prior art, and disallowing patents on things that are `obvious to the layperson'.

Good

[LegendLength]

Nothing wakes up the apathetic masses quite like this ruling. I wonder if we will ever live in a world where more than 5/10 people realize the importance of open standards. I can dream.

Re:Good

[archnerd]

Surely you're refering to tech community and not to the general population? Do you think 5 out of 10 people even understand what "open standards" are?

Ownership

[nuggz]

A standard is something people agree on.

Just because someone somewhere says "this is standard" it does not revoke patents other individuals or organizations have.

Unisys

[Anonymous Coward]

The patent on GIFs expires soon (June) .. I wonder if Unisys will donate the patent to the public domain a month before it expires (in the tradition of RSA) or will they wait around till it expires and milk every dime off a patent everybody knows they dont deserve.

There is a fine line... always is for the Sopranos

[adzoox]

Exactly, I liken this to a "new mafia" that has arisen in the tech sector.

Instead of working hard and being creative, companies (and individuals) have chosen to litigate with crooked lawyers. These lawyers (think Johnny Cochran type) aren't creative, aren't smart, they are simply crooks. It's almost like they advertise and recruit through high profile cases such as this. Juries, Judges, and the public at large are being taken advantage of the same way the mafia takes advantage of an industry or commodity. In this case and cases such as Bezos being able to patent every type of transaction that uses a mouse click, and in most cases, the entire Microsoft Apple/Netscape trials, the judicial systems knowledge of the small details are taken advantage of.

I agree with you, this will have the effect, if successful, of invalidating the technology (JPEG) - a new standard will arise. I am both happy and concerned that it may be Sony though. They have the muscle and marketting/liscensing power to make a new standard adopted very quickly. However, they also tend get all googly eyed when they have the opportunity to make something proprietary and be the SOLE distributer or patent/copyright/license holder.