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!

Re:Peoples first reaction..

[monkeydo]

If they read the article thier reaction was probably something like, "Wow, this story doesn't have anything to do with Forgent at all."

Now, St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants Inc. through the law firm of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi has successfully sued Sony claiming that the company's cameras infringe on four patents dating back to as long ago as 1992, which it purchased in 1995. The judgement was nowhere near the staggering $171.4 million dollars in royalties St. Clair felt it was owed on Sony's $3.01 billion in camera sales since 1998, but at $25 million on patents it obtained for only $65,000, the company is doubtless still laughing all the way to the bank.

Re:Peoples first reaction..

[0x0d0a]

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

*MY* reaction was "Maybe JPEG (and lossy compression)" will finally go away and we can use PNG and lossless JPEG for everything. We've got the hard drive space, and a PNG of a photograph is, in my experience, only about five times larger than a decent-quality JPEG. Bandwidth is cheap. The limiting factor is people throwing movies around, not images. Storage is cheap and plentiful. I don't care *how* much you like your porn, your 120 GB hard drive is *not* filled because of image data.

PNG would give us just about everything we need (well, a few people wanted alternate colorspaces, but such is life). Alpha channel, gamma, good corruption detection, lossless data, an actual *standard* ([cough] TIFF)...

Re:Peoples first reaction..

[Zork the Almighty]

...mentions porn it gets modded up just because it's somewhat taboo.

Hmmm, I bet you don't have any porn. Most people here probably do, and their comments and jokes about porn are not so much immature as they are sad.

Re:Peoples first reaction..

[rworne]

Storage is cheap and plentiful. I don't care *how* much you like your porn, your 120 GB hard drive is *not* filled because of image data.

Perhaps you don't like porn as much as I do? I have 300 gigs of storage on my machine at home and a broadband connection, I ain't paying all that money to the ISP for nothing so you gotta fill it with something.

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

[roalt]

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.

Yeah, let's fight back with their own means by developing a new patent system and then applying for a patent on this system...

Re:Fed up about reading about bad patents

[nattt]

And you sir are an abusive twat!

Patents are no longer written in english it would seem, so it's pretty hard to contest something you don't understand.

Software is protected by copyright - it doesn't need patent protection.

If I see a new steam engine, I can deduce how it works by it's shape and structure. If I see a new computer program running (not it's source, obviously) I have very little idea of how it works. Patents should be for things, not abstractions!

Re:Fed up about reading about bad patents

[cyb97]

I guess the US patentoffice would be kind of hesitant to give out patents to people whose dayjob includes being a dictator with atleast 3 clones/lookalikes...

Re:Fed up about reading about bad patents

[nattt]

The current US "anti-terrorism" stance is an excuse for sneaky trade embargos. It's got very little to do with oil or Saddam or anything other than balance of trade.

As part of the whole post 911 thing, the US now wants 24 hours notice of the contents of all shipments destined for the US, before they're even loaded onto the ship in the foreign port - so that they, if they decide to, can send a US customs inspector to check on the goods.

This is ofcourse, restraint of trade, but under the guise of anti-terrorism. It's designed to ruin anyone doing "just in time" manufacturing and frustrate people in general importing into the US. This is to encourage foreign companies to move their entire manufacturing (not just final assembly) to the US, and to make sure that the money generated stays in the US.

Re:Fed up about reading about bad patents

[jafuser]

Sometime over the past few decades, we went from a majority of people following the spirit of the law, to them following only the most literal letter of the law...

Now it's all about how you can find the next loophole to exploit, and profit from it as much as possible before someone else does and the loophole is closed.

I think it's quite a sign of how sad the situation is when you look at how much favoritisim our government gives to big business, when a business itself does not have a right to vote.

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'.

Re:Fed up about reading about bad patents

[freestyle-fiend]

> It's past time for a revamp of the whole system,

I agree. The patent system needs to be changed, not only to prevent bad patents from being awarded, but also to allow (even poor) individuals and small companies to defend and prosecute patent cases and apply for patents. Currently patents are expensive to obtain and use. Patent holders are able to use the cost of court proceedings to punish or frighten
those of whom they disapprove (especially weaker competitors), even if they would not win the case.

> make some areas un-patentable again.

This sounds like Richard Stallman's solution to the patent crisis. I used to agree with it, until I was told that the purpose of the patent system is to provide an incentive (in the form of a monopoly or royalties) for the developer of the idea covered by the patent to publish it. Many of the ideas covered by controversial patents don't need to be published for us to understand them. Some are simply too obvious and others can be reverse engineered. These patents have no purpose. Therefore it is not the case that some areas need to be exempt from patents, but that only ideas that would take the rest of the sector the entire term of the patent or longer to understand should be patentable.

Re:Fed up about reading about bad patents

[Tablizer]

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

I got it! I can use gov stupidity in area A to fight gov stupidity in area B. For example, if one can patent the *act* of using any compression in a digital camera (as another post alleges), then one can patent the act of using H-1B workers to work on "digital projects". I will charge really stiff royalties. Hwa ha ha he he he!

Re:Fed up about reading about bad patents

[dougmc]

The idea that an idea that is obvious now was not obvious before is hard to grasp for most people -- otherwise you wouldn't hear "Why didn't I think of that?!" so often.

Agreed. However, JPEG encoding isn't so obvious even now. Yes, it's ubiquitous, but not many of the people who use it could describe how it works internally. The XOR cursor, that's obvious. JPEG compression is much more complicated.

Though looking at the news article in question, none of the patents they list seem to cover JPEG compression directly at all -- only certain ideas dealing with digital cameras. But maybe one of them deals with using JPEG compression in a digital camera -- and if so, that would fall under the category of `take somebody else's patent, and patent an obvious use of it.'

Re:Fed up about reading about bad patents

[greenrd]

only ideas that would take the rest of the sector the entire term of the patent or longer to understand should be patentable.

Like what?

Re:Fed up about reading about bad patents

[ConceptJunkie]

Yeah, but the USPTO, in their rush to issue patents for any conceivable idea, would hardly bother to check who the patent was being issued to. After all, they don't bother with prior art or obviousness.

Re:Fed up about reading about bad patents

[freestyle-fiend]

That's a matter for the Patent Office, but I don't think that all patents should have the same duration. The duration of a patent ought to depend on how long it will benefit the industry for.

Enough already

[nath_o_brien]

Supposedly Forgent only has until 2004 to get all it can out of the patent.

Isn't a 384.6% return-on-investment enough for them to have got out of it already?

Re:Enough already

[goldcd]

erm don't you mean 38461% or 384-fold?

Re:Enough already

[Animus Howard]

> Isn't a 384.6% return-on-investment enough for
> them to have got out of it already?

It's a return of 384 times their investment (38400%) but even so...

An interviewer once asked multi-billionaire J. Paul Getty "You're a very rich man. How much is enough?"

He smiled and answered quietly, "Just a little bit more."

Re:Enough already

[nath_o_brien]

Yeah, that's what I meant. times, not %. the word "doh" would spring to mind but i'd probably get that confused too and end up saying something else entirely instead. ho hum.

Re:Enough already

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

Boy, I'd love to be your boss. Perhaps if you were to do a little overtime work at the McDonald's where you work, you'd look at your check and say to me, "Hey, I didn't get paid for the extra time I worked!"

To which I would reply, "Jesus, isn't getting paid for 40 hours enough already?"
In understanding how companies work, realize that they're just like people except on a grander scale.

Re:Enough already

[esper_child]

People like that disgust me. what is the point to having that much money. There is none. He already has more money than most people here will see, and he wants MORE?
Anyways this is probly even further off topic, but what really is the point to amassing monitary wealth? It seems to me that wealth should be given back to the community to try and make it a better place. The path bettering oneself is not through money but through what is inside. You must give up external wealth to gain internal wealth. In the end it isn't the number of toys that matter, but the actions one takes that matter.

Re:Enough already

[arkanes]

The average US salaray is 27k a year. A billion dollars is about 37,000 times that. In other words, a billion dollars is more money than any 1000 average US workers will make, combined, in 75% of thier working lifespan(assuming 50 years working). Not take home, mind you, but net. I often wonder if the world would really suffer if we just capped everyones net wealth at, say, 100 million. If you make 100 million, you win, and you don't get to play any more.

(I know it's not feasible, but it's interesting to think about).

Re:Enough already

[caluml]

Money. You can't take it with you when you die.

Re:Enough already

[mfrank]

Just what do you think somebody with a billion dollars *does* with that money? Stick it under their mattress? They invest it, creating jobs. People with that kind of money are the ones that are good at creating wealth, and that wealth eventually works its way through the system.

Or have you not noticed that in countries that are run by your ideals, nearly everybody lives in poverty?

Re:Enough already

[arkanes]

I wasn't aware that there were any countries that lived by my "ideals".

Most of your economic theories break down at the very high end anyway - it's not like the wealth woulnd't be created if they didn't get it, it'd be just be redistributed.

Here's another though experiment: How about, instead of paying stock dividends, any profits generated by a company had to be funneled into bonuses for all the employees?

Re:Enough already

[esper_child]

what do you mean just like me?
I have no interest in having more money than I already have. I have no need for it, and don't really desire to have more of it.

Re:Enough already

[bluprint]

"it's not like the wealth woulnd't be created if they didn't get it, it'd be just be redistributed." No, it's exactly like that. Person X is good at creating wealth. He hits a certain arbitrary mark that you selected, and now can't "play" anymore. Now, the wealth he would have created in future years, will *not* be created...because you won't let him play. It's a little like taking your best point-scorer out of the ball game. Or at the very worst, he isn't necessarily hurting anyone else just by making more money, so why not let him keep playing? (And the fact that he makes money does not imply some criminal/immoral act like theft, deception, etc...that's a different conversation)

Re:Enough already

[Zork the Almighty]

This is getting interesting.

"It's a little like taking your best point-scorer out of the ball game."

Actually, its very different. In a ballgame, that scorer is on your side, and they help you win (at the expense of the other team). In the economy, everyone is more or less competing, so that one person's obscene greed comes at the expense of everyone else.

That alone is not an argument to take them out of the game, however. It's to the economy's benefit that some people are richer than others, but how much is too much ? The problem is that past a certain point, one can wield wealth and power to their own benefit and the result will actually be detrimental to society. Ex : Insider trading, monopolies, collusion, undue political influence, etc. Obviously we enact laws to try to stop these things... but those laws can be changed. That is the real concern here : that some people will become so wealthy and powerful that they can tip over all of our checks and balances.

Re:Enough already

[mfrank]

That would be true if economics were a zero-sum game. It isn't. Obscene greed doesn't have to come at the expense of everyone else. Not every company is Enron.

Instead of passing laws to limit wealth, pass laws to keep wealthy people from harming society. Bill Gates doesn't get to abuse the monopoly position, but he still gets to give 20 billion to charity.

If you think the wealthy are corrupting the politicians, maybe you need to demand more from your politicians. I'll tell you what, though, the pension fund managers and insurance companies are going to do a hell of a lot more to make the financial institutions honest that the govt will. And they would be a lot less likely to do it if they didn't have some big players holding their feet to the fire.

After all, if OJ can get away with murder, you're going to have to lower the bar really low to keep the wealthy and powerful from influencing government.

Re:Enough already

[mfrank]

Cool. Let's get rid of one of the main reasons to buy stock. That should do wonders for the stock market.

Guess what. A company *can* put all its profits into bonuses for all its employees. If the owners agree to it. Doubt that will happen if it's a publicly held company. On the other hand, there's nothing keeping the employees from buying up the stock and becoming the owners.

There's a company that did than already. United (or is it Delta?) is owned primarily by its employees. Of course, the retards have been giving themselves the highest raises in the airline industry, and when they go bankrupt they'll lose their jobs *and* the value of all their stock will go to zero. I suppose you'll tell me now that the govt should bail them out
when that happens. Screw them. Let somebody buy their planes and routes for a song, and make the unions crawl on their bellies to get their jobs back.

BTW, one reason the other airlines are in so much trouble is that their unions have demanded they keep up with United's pay levels.

I'm sll in favor of well-regulated business, but you're talking about killing the goose that laid the golden egg. The success of the economy is based on LETTING PEOPLE DO WHAT THEY WANT. Unless they're hurting other people, leave them the hell alone.

Re:Enough already

[rworne]

Not take home, mind you, but net

Take home pay IS net pay.

What you earn before you pay your protection fees to FICA and the kickback to the Feds & State governments on a convenient installment plan is your Gross Pay.

Re:Enough already

[arkanes]

Dividends are only the nominal reason to buy stocks. How many stock traders do you know who actually hold onto stock and earn dividends off it? The reason to buy stock is that you expect to be able to sell it later. The stock market is a big shell game with no real basis in reality. The tech bubble was a good an infication of that as anything.

Note that I'm not talking about raising salaries. That's mismanagment. I'm talking about redistributing profits to employees rather than owners.

That should have almost exactly the same benefits as the trickle down theory, except moreso, because the people benefitting get money directly.

Re:Enough already

[arkanes]

Erm. Yes. Gross. Blame the meds ;P

Re:Enough already

[mfrank]

My grandma's a millionaire from stocks that someone like you wouldn't pick up if you saw it lying on the ground. Boring stuff like utilities.

How old are you? The last seven or eight years of the stock market were a bubble, yes, but that's not how it normally is. You buy stock, you buy ownership in a company. It isn't to hard to know when the stock is overvalued. In the late nineties I wasn't buying tech stocks, I was selling them. So long, suckers. If you buy overpriced stock because you think you'll find a sucker to pay even more for it, you better go get some soap, cause you're going to take a bath.
Go tell Warren Buffet the stock market is a shell game. He'll get a good chuckle out of that.

And why the f*ck should profits go to the employees instead of the owners? The owners are the OWNERS. If the company goes under, the employees are out maybe two weeks pay. The owners lose every dime they put in. The people hurt by the collapse of Enron weren't the ones that just lost their jobs, they were the ones that had their life savings tied up in Enron stock. If they're really unlucky (or more accurately, if they're that stupid), they lost their jobs *and* their life savings.

If the employees want the profits from the company, they can buy the stock (although they'd damn well better diversify). Or join a startup and get sweat equity. You want a shot at the rewards, you better be willing to take the risks. I know people who worked in startups that failed, and they had *nothing* to show for years of work, not even salary. They were paid in sweat equity.

You're an employee? You're a resource. Your pay is determined by the laws of supply and demand.

BTW, I'm an employee. Though I hope to eventually be enough of an owner to change that.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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?

Re:Good

[jkrise]

" Surely you're refering to tech community and not to the general population"

I'm sure he's referring to the tech community. I'm yet to meet a techy type or a geek who's apathetic to other techies' needs and feelings.

GNU users are apathetic !
Windows users are pathetic!!

Re:Good

[Zocalo]

Size especially is of little relevance anymore

That rather depends on whether you are talking about the data file or the subject matter, doesn't it? ;)

Re:Good

[cgenman]

Didn't we say this when the GIF debacle happened? Or Amazon's still standing one-click patent? The patent on hyperlinking? ActiveBuddy's patented IRC Bots?

Nothing wakes up the apathetic masses: that's why they're called "apathetic."

Re:Good

[MrNemesis]

I'd go one further, and say that most computer users aren't even aware of standards in the first place. As Garcia above me points out, all they want to do is click x to do y.

Trying to explain why I use OpenOffice.org instead of the same warezed copy of MS Office that half my friends use is like climbing a firemans pole on the back of a greased pig. You don't get anywhere fast. And are the users going to notice? Another $10 on top of photoshop, which most people never pay for?

I sound so despondent and critical, but it's really because the average user won't even notice issues like this, much less care.

Re:Good

[DrZircon]

In fact you already do. The average number of legs possessed by the population is something like 1.7 (and increasing slowly)

Re:Good

[DrSkwid]

Clearly you have not taken a humour course, it is impossible for 50% of the population to get jokes, because they will be humourless whatever point they are in time, so technically you cant have 50% of people laughing, when the humour will be higher and those people will become the new clowns.

Re:Good

[sqlrob]

0,0,7,8,9,10

Average is 5 2/3

4, or 2/3 (66.7%) are above average.

Re:Good

[Verteiron]

So, was having your sense of humor surgically removed a painful process? Or was it so atrophied to begin with that it didn't really matter?

Re:Good

[Lumpy]

hell in genreal population less than 1 out of 100 know what a jpeg is, let alone how it affect them.

the cows... I mean people dont care unless it affects their pocket directly. I.E. sony asks all sony camera owners to pay up another $5.00 to them to pay for the ruling.

THEN it might get some attention, but I still highly doubt it.

Re:Good

[SecretAsianMan]

LegendLength said:

Nothing wakes up the apathetic masses quite like this ruling.

I think that would be more well said like this: "Like this ruling, nothing wakes up the apathetic masses.". The masses don't know or care about open standards. The masses don't know or care what JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, etc are. When they surf to CNN.com, they want to see a picture. That is the extent of their caring.

So I do encourage you to dream on. I do as well, but I dream of something other than an appeal from the apathetic masses.

Re:Good

[dougmc]

Clearly you have not taken statistics courses, it is impossible for 50% of the population to be above average, because they will be the average at whatever point they are in time, so technically you cant have 50% of people above average, as the average will be higher and those people will become the new average.

Obviously you never took a statistics class either.

Suppose that you have 100 individuals. 99 of these people have an income of 100 dollars/day. The other one person makes only 50 dollars/day. Looks like 99% of the people have `above average income'. (In case you were wonderng, average means `mean', not `median' and not `mode'.)

You're assuming a bell curve distribution. While this assumption may be correct much of the time, especially in real life, stop throwing around words like `impossible' when they don't apply.

(Either that, or you think that `average' means `median'. Of coruse, for a bell curve distribution, mean, median and mode are all the same thing.)

Re:Good

[fishbowl]

>Probably not. As long as they can click the porn
>link and have a picture come up it doesn't
>matter.

Of course, the situation in the article is exactly the sort of thing that might jeapordize the click-and-wank community.

Re:Good

[Tablizer]

I wonder if we will ever live in a world where more than 5/10 people realize the importance of open standards.

I wonder if we will ever live in a world where 5/10 people know how to simplify fractions :-P

Re:Good

[Moofie]

Note that the number of legs somebody possesses is an integer value. Intelligence has far higher resolution.

JPEG 2000?

[forgoil]

Does this also affect JPEG 2000?

Shows that one should use media that is open and patent free (such as ogg/png/etc) after all...

Re:JPEG 2000?

[WARM3CH]

No, JPEG2000 is a different beast. Also, to my knowledge apart from JPEG2000, there is no other widely used standard to replace JPEG and this is why that patent is so annoying as in fact JPEG has a very wide academic background that it is totally unfair to patent it to a signle coorporate. About PNG, have to say PNG has a lossless compressor and belongs to a different class of algorithms (and applications).

Re:JPEG 2000?

[mat.h]

Does this also affect JPEG 2000?

No, I don't think so. The Forgent patent covered DCT-based image/video compression schemes (cut up your image into small blocks; apply a discrete cosine transform to each block; quantize the DCT coefficients, allocating little precision to high frequencies; do some sort of entropy coding on the quantized coefficients), i.e. JPEG and MPEG video. JPEG 2000 is wavelet-based and not covered by this patent, though I am somewhat worried by their choice of arithmetic coding as their entropy coding. I was under the impression that some aspect of implementing arithmetic coding was a little shady, patent-wise (but I don't have any hard facts on that).

Shows that one should use media that is open and patent free (such as ogg/png/etc) after all...

Shows that there is no such thing as "open and patent free". Remember the "burn all GIFs" days? As PNG support wasn't widespread enough yet, many a GIF was reencoded into JPEG, as that was open and patent free. People thought.

Re:JPEG 2000?

[arvindn]

Shows that one should use media that is open and patent free (such as ogg/png/etc) after all...

PNG can not replace jpeg. png is a lossless compression algorithm. Therefore, for encoding images like photographs, using png will lead to a huge increase in file size. That said, I've noticed that people tend to use jpeg for many things for which png would be better: screenshots for instance. Not only is a screenshot usually smaller in size when encoded using png, it also leaves the text clear while jpeg blurs it.

Re:JPEG 2000?

[Jage]

Quite the contrary - that phrase is entirely correct.

Re:JPEG 2000?

[Wesley Felter]

JPEG 2000 is patented out the wazoo, but you can get a free license to the patents if you implement the spec correctly.

Re:jpeg alternative?

[Alan Partridge]

PNG and LWF - though Lurawave is proprietary

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...

Re:jpeg alternative?

[mark2003]

How about GIF? Oh hang on doesn't somebody own the patent for that as well?

Re:jpeg alternative?

[WildThing]

Yes - the PNG format. it's free, works as well(if not better than Jpeg), and all the browsers support it.
We've been using PNG for the past 3 years for our projects without any problems or hitches.
Take a look at the PNG Home Site

ridiculous

[mholt108]

This sux. Can I say it loud_enough. These people did not earn this, same as the cretin water rights speculators. How about someone heads over there and throws a few bricks through their stupid selfish window.

The legal system has become the new stock exchange. Bloody Hell. They should all be charged for treason.

matt

Re:ridiculous

[knowledgepeacewi]

please refer to your own sig: 9/11 : The indignation being the ultimate indication - of American arrogance.
You are proposing an illegal action and could be charged with inciting violence.

If you don't like the system, change it.

If you haven't tried to change the system, you have no right to complain.

If you've tried to change the system through the proper channels, and couldn't. You should try non-violent protests.

Violence is not the way to change things on an domestic level and violent offenders recieve no mercy in our legal system.

Re:ridiculous

[mholt108]

"Violence is not the way to change things on an domestic level and violent offenders recieve no mercy in our legal system."

Sure they do, they just have to be rich enough to work the system. The draconian penalties only apply to those who cannot afford a lawyer who understands how to work the system. And violent protest is the only way to change things, if you understand history you will know that. The day will come when the .gov is on the chopping blocks again. I had hoped it was further away than it is, but with this new regiem... who knows. One thing is for sure, 500,000 elites cannot hold back the tide of half a billion.

On the subject of the post. Moral behaviour cannot be legislated, it must be enforced through social customs. When moral behaviour dies, society soon follows. But these days no-one walks.

I'm confused

[esarjeant]

I thought JPEG was an open standard, why does Forgent stand to profit from this?

Unlike GIF, JPEG was established by a standards body (ISO). Now they want to renege on that.

Register has more info on this one. Weird.

Re:I'm confused

[evilviper]

MPEG (1/2/3/4) are open standards as well. That just means the standard is freely available, NOT that it is pantent-free in any-way.

There is a fine line....

[Voltas]

There is a fine line between Patents protection and prevention of the propagation of technology. How close do you hold your cards to your chest before you release that your product is so proprietary that no one uses it?

Sony was using JPEG in there cameras... that kept the oh so VALUABLE compressed image technology on our systems. If yah sue everyone that uses your tech then your tech will disappear. We have maybe one other image compression tech? oh no wait, we've got a tone.

I'm not an open source junky ... some of us need to get paid, but chasing patients on industry standards just because you gave it away and now EVERYONE uses it is dumb.

Re:There is a fine line....

[sogoodsofarsowhat]

Um Its $25 MILLION DOLLARS DUMB!!! And who couldnt afford to be a little dumber for $25M

Re:There is a fine line....

[hackstraw]

If yah sue everyone that uses your tech then your tech will disappear.

They are not doing that, they sat on it for over ten years, and now their dipping into the pockets deep enough to pay. Anyway, I'm baffled where this patent came from. Remember this page? It goes on and on about how gifs are evil because of patents and uses a jpeg for an image.

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?

Re:My patent idea

[Tablizer]

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?

Hell, the lawyers will prob'ly dig up poor Monet and auction his body on ebay to pay for all the back royalties.

Re:jpeg alternative?

[Zog The Undeniable]

I agree, PNG is brilliant, but IE doesn't support it fully, which hinders its use by webmasters a lot (seeing as IE ownz0rs the market, for better or for worse).

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.

Re:Ownership

[AtomicBomb]

I think standardization process is one of the area patent rule must be reformed on. For "important enough" standard, which can be classified as say ANSI, ISO etc, they should be able to register with the patent office.

A deadline (e.g. 1 yr) is set for patent holders who think their patent has been violated in the process. If they don't actively defense their patent in that process, tell them to forget about it.

I know some readers may worry about some companies may start abusing the system. But, this won't bring obvious advantage to them. These people don't actually do research/invention. They don't have material to copy at that stage. Even so, there is no money return if they succeed to block the standardization process.

Ummm...Forgent? Read Article...

[Fallen Kell]

It wasn't Forgent Networks that won the 25m, it was St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants Inc.. It just happens to be that the Forgent Networks patent lisence fees that Sony began paying allowed St. Clair to win the case.

Re:Ummm...Forgent? Read Article...

[mcguirez]

So... I guess Sony got what they deserved. Cave in to one and others will show up with their hand out.

They deserve their karma. I wonder how the other RIAA folks are doing...

Wrong company?

[Troed]

Doesn't the linked story say the company behind _this_ lawsuit is St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants Inc - and the Forge's suit was earlier?

Wrong headline: this is not Forgent.

[Raphael]

The headline and the text of the Slashdot submission are wrong. Sony paid $16M to Forgent Network some time ago as part of an out-of-court settlement. But this article is about a different company: St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants Inc. of Grosse Pointe, Mich. That company is the one that has won $25M in court.

Please read the text of the article and the press release appended to it, and you will see a different story than the one given in the Slashdot submission. The press release contains a quote saying: "this lawsuit is similar to out-of-court settlements reached by Forgent Networks and Dallas based law firm [...]" but the two cases are different. They are both bad, but the companies are different.

Re:Wrong headline: this is not Forgent.

[billimad]

The headline and the text of the Slashdot submission are wrong

s'ok. in 10mins the article we be posted again with the correct information...but with spelling mistakes.

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

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.

Re:Unisys

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If they need a tax write-off, you can bet that it will be donated before the expiration date. Not directly to the public domain, but rather to some non-profit "shell." I think this kind of tax-evasion was covered here recently, or maybe that was kuro5hin.

Re:Unisys

[Citizen of Earth]

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.

Why would they stop being bastards now? The real question is whether there are any other submarines in the water, or if LZW becomes totally free and clear on whatever magical day in June.

Read the article!

[Oscaro]

Actually, this has nothing to do with Forgent.

RTFA!

Implications for C#

[j3110]

If you can give a product to the ISO body as a standard, then still file patent claims against people, then what does the ISO standard mean???

Does this not pave the way for MS to enforce patents on anyone implementing their .Net functionality?

Also, why is it that people say Java is proprietary, but ISO standards are not? In the JCP, in order to get anything accepted, you must relinquish all patent rights in it. Sounds to me like the JCP is better than ISO of ensuring that a standard is not proprietary.

Re:Implications for C#

[forgoil]

But is JCP still any good? Just because you relinquish your patents doesn't make Java any more open, just saves Sun's big fat ass.

What we need is a system where standards becomes fully free, free to use, free of patent claims, etc.

Re:Implications for C#

[cyb97]

The ISO means that you're potentially gonna make more money as an ISO standard is more likely to be adopted than some unknown method some boffin has pondered up...

Re:Implications for C#

[muffen]

Does this not pave the way for MS to enforce patents on anyone implementing their .Net functionality?

... don't think they'll do that. They can't convince people to use .Net the way it is, imagine if they started suing people for using it.

Re:Implications for C#

[j3110]

Yeah, they are. Exceptions are made for logo testing from SUN, but the spec itself is open. Apache is actually on the JCP board now that SUN has allowed access to the testing suites as well. AFAIK, the first API from SUN to be included in this new license will be J2EE 1.4. Apache's Jakarta project already makes use of some of these API's.

However, you are free to implement any of them from what I can tell. SUN doesn't want people to use their logo or claim compatiblity until you have been certified, but certification, AFAIK, is free for non-profit organizations (or will be soon).

JBoss doesn't fall under this category, however, because they are a for profit organization trying to certify an Open Source application server. They are making money off their product, so they have to pay, but from what we can tell, it's only about 10% of the usual costs.

I'm a little uncertain on some of this, but a lot of the APIs is released by other companies than SUN, and is now mixed in with other APIs. I think the only thing SUN holds an actual patent on is a couple of things in the VM (which I could be mistaken). SUN does hold trademark and copyrights on everything they have though. Technically, I think it's possible to write a complete Java VM with all the libraries without getting in trouble with patents. If .Net doesn't break any patents, then it's likely any clean-room implementation of Java would also be just fine.

The API's that go through the JCP do actually make them open. The company relinquishes the patents to everyone in the community that might want to implement it. The JCP is made up of many companies (developers and product/tool makers) and they really have the best interests of the technology at heart. Most of the companies in the JCP have a lot riding on Java.

So, I think the JCP qualifies for your "fully free, free to use, free of patent claims, etc." clause. The biggest barrier is political to developers. Whenever someone mentions Java on slashdot, 8 people scream "slow, proprietary, dead" when in fact none are true.

What we need is several independant standards bodies. One big monolith like ISO just isn't all that good. If there is enough momentum behind a technology, they could set up their own body like SUN did with Java. This way you have a more personal experience in the standard. More people that should be heard will be heard by a smaller group of people with one common interest of promoting and culturing their idea. Also, smaller bodies are more nimble, and are quick to fix things without breaking backwards compatibility when unnecessary.

2004

[Anonymous Coward]

"Supposedly Forgent only has until 2004 to get all it can out of the patent."

So what? They can still dedicate the next 20 years suing people who violated their patent before 2004.

Re:2004

[asavage]

If I remember correctly though, at least in Canada, they only have about six years to file after the violation or they can't sue. This is to protect the defendant as details and records get lost over time.

Re:jpeg alternative?

[lfourrier]

even if png is good, how do you know there is not some company somewhere, with a broadly worded patent in it's pocket, just waiting for a suficient big player to use it, and being sued?

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.

Re:jpeg alternative?

[clausiam]

In my experience 24-bit PNG files are much bigger than JPEG at the quality typically used for web images.

Re:jpeg alternative?

[AtomicBomb]

PNG is a very good picture format. However, you cannot simply replace JPEG with PNG. Both PNG and JPEG compress images, but PNG is lossless while JPEG is lossy.

While for say, web graphics PNG may be as good as JPEG, The compression ratio for JPEG is in general much much better for natural images (eg photos). If the patent issue turns out to become very nasty, we may have to adopt the next one (JPEG2000). Situation is similar to the gif->png story.

Where?

[IkeTo]

Where is the "Burn all your JPEG" campaign running? Or "Burn all your JPEG-making digital camera" campaign?

Re:Where?

[gpinzone]

Sounds good to me, but what format will replace jpeg? JPEG2000 uses wavelets, which is good, but requires more processing power. I'm not sure if cameras have the cpu power needed to compress in this format as quickly.

Re:Where?

[dacarr]

Not yet they don't. Remember, technology will advance in leaps and bounds....

Dammit!

[mschoolbus]

I read that as http://frognet.net at first... I thought that small ISP actually had something big going...

Re:jpeg alternative?

[mofochickamo]

PNGs are a better alternative to GIFs than to JPEGs. For photographic images JPEG is gernerally a better choice than PNG. Here is an excerpt from PNG's Web Site:

Note that for transmission of finished truecolor images--especially photographic ones--JPEG is almost always a better choice. Although JPEG's lossy compression can introduce visible artifacts, these can be minimized, and the savings in file size even at high quality levels is much better than is generally possible with a lossless format like PNG.

PNG replaces GIF but not JPEG

[WARM3CH]

PNG was not made to replace JPEG as it has a lossless compression method which in practice means a much bigger filesize over JPEG or JPEG2000. Yet, PNG is invaluable for lossless storage of images where even smallest degredation of the image quality is unacceptable (like image editing intermediate files). All in all, PNG and JPEG are apple and orange....

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.

learn your lessons NOW people

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

GIF, JPEG, ...

MP3. Get it through your heads, people. Using these patent-encumbered tech only comes back to bite you where it hurts -- 5 years down a committed tech track. PNG, OGG, ... support open standards in your products NOW while you can choose to do it.

Re:learn your lessons NOW people

[mraymer]

Yes, PNG is a good idea for now... but how long before some greedy corporation that has no other way to make a profit slips some sort of patent through on PNG?

I wouldn't say it's impossible, either. Especially when you consider some of extremly broad software patents that have made it, such as the JPEG one.

Patents are not doing anything close to the original intended function, unless that was to provide a revenue stream for worthless companies that can't make a buck on their own merits.

Re:learn your lessons NOW people

[einer]

What was the best audio codec before mp3? It wasn't ogg. What was the best graphics compression format before jpeg?

My point is that oft times patent encumbered tech is the only tech available for that application. If the choices that are available today, were available 5 years ago, I have no doubt that most developers would've made the 'right' choice.

I agree that using patented technology has its drawbacks, but if there's nothing else around, it's what you will use.

Why is this so bad? If I develop a video compression system that's so good it changes how we think about portable media, and I patent it, why shouldn't people use it if they feel that its value outweighs or equals its price? For that matter, what keeps joe hacker from reimplimenting a similar system?

Obviously, the barratry that goes hand in hand with placing restrictions on how your IP is used is anethema and repellent to most OS programmers.

Re:learn your lessons NOW people

[AnyoneEB]

PNG instead of JPEG? Try some size comparisons, I find PNG is usually at least twice the size of a JPEG of the same image. Of course JPEG is lossy, but you usually can't tell, if you can then PNG is worth it.

Re:learn your lessons NOW people

[knowledgepeacewi]

perhaps also supplying the alternatives to these would be beneficial to your readers instead of just insulting us?


for JPEG, PNG is a good alternative.

How do you get a patent for this?!

[mofochickamo]

#6,496,222 - Digital camera with memory format initialization

What a novel idea! Obviously a new idea well deserving of a patent (please do not reply if you missed the sarcasm).

Re:jpeg alternative?

[pcardoso]

They both have their uses. For image storage, PNGs are better as they are lossless, but for transmission over slow links a lossy JPGs is much more effective.

Gifs/pngs are better suited for drawn images with a small variation in detail, where jpeg is better for photographs or other images with high detail.

And PNG support in IE is horrible. In a recent project I worked on recently I had to convert most of the PNGs to GIFs because IE did not support transparency correctly, let alone the alpha channel. Things were wonderful in Mozilla, whereas in IE they were horrible with lots of jagged edges and I did not know why at the time. Then I realised it was the alpha channel that Mozilla blended the image correctly with the background, and in IE it was a mess. I had to make various gifs with different color backgrounds to achieve the same effect in IE.

The project I am talking about is in here. You can use login test, password test to see what I am talking about, namely the icons on the table after login. It's in portuguese but you shouldn't have many problems with that I hope.

Regards,
pedro

What next?

[Andrewkov]

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

Re:Send Email Stating Displeasure

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

Oh sure, they were throwing their considerable weight, in respect to Sony [Sony who?], around - weren't they?

Re:wow

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

People without deep pockets don't have to worry. Since they don't have any cash, no one is going to file suit against them. No one sues homeless people.

duh

[Smallest]

up until last year, JPEG was considered "open". nobody here even suspected JPEG would be in patent trouble.

maybe tomorrow someone will pop up with a patent that covers the compression that zLib uses (g'bye PNG).

who would you yell at then?

-c

Re:duh

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

if someone can buy and sell the JPEG patent, then naturally there can be patent trouble. There isn't a publicly known patent involved with PNG or OGG.

Bottom line, you can't trust that a 'friendly' company won't end up selling its 'friendly' patents to a 3rd party which doesn't feel like being so friendly any more.

Don't use any patented code, whatsoever, for any reason, unless there is a legal basis for believing that the patent will not be used against you. Don't trust the goodwill of a company.

Re:duh

[Zathrus]

That's non-viable.

The entire point is that you may not KNOW if there's a patent involved or not. Sure, there's not a publicly known patent involved with PNG or OGG. That LZW patent (which affected GIF) was really well known now wasn't it?

As the prior poster said - what if it's discovered that part of OGG or PNG or whatever is patented? Then you're just as SOL as you are now.

And while I support going to less encumbered standards (such as OGG or PNG), the reality is that the entire patent system needs to be dramatically overhauled. Honestly I suspect most of the overhaul needs to occur at the court system, not the patent system (or the malpractice system, or whatever - it always boils down to the court system and it costing too much for the Right Thing to occur), but I also don't expect that to occur anytime soon.

Re:duh

[Citizen of Earth]

maybe tomorrow someone will pop up with a patent that covers the compression that zLib uses (g'bye PNG).

That isn't likely since the compression method was published at least 26 years ago. I only say "isn't likely" since many bogus re-patents have probably slipped through.

Re:duh

[mcbridematt]

Ok. Time we start using bzip2 in everything.

Re:jpeg alternative?

[forgoil]

Oddly enough the icons looked fine here in IE. Win XP pro with all updates (I dunno if there is some plug-in or something doing something).

But I agree, the engineers over at M$ should fix the alphachannel stuff for PNG (etc) asap.

Unfair

[nuggz]

You are suggesting someone should be allowed to take my patent from the Patent Office, call it a standard, and basically steal my patent?

I must clearly disclose my patent. The standard organizations do not have to publicly disclose any standards. This isn't fair.

Re:Unfair

[Carewolf]

Only if you dont defend your patent, or make him aware he is infringing. But standard is a bit weak term, maybe better to say that if you let your patent come into wide use without claiming your patent right, you cant come back and claim it later to pick royalties.

Re:Unfair

[AtomicBomb]

The other way round. Before registering with the patent office, the standardization process disclose what they come up with as their proposed standard at the final stage.

In a sense, they are at a special patent pending stage. If you feel your existing patent is being offended, say so. It is a fair go for everyone.

Re:Unfair

[nuggz]

Standards organizations don't need to patent the standard.
If they performed a patent search before setting a standard, this would likely solve the problem, but they don't do it.

Re:Unfair

[gl4ss]

'submarine' patents don't show up, so you can't know if one party involved in the standardization process is trying to patent the system too(rdrimms anyone?).

i'm not a lawyer and yadda yadda.

but the patent afaik the patent isn't 'public' when it's being processed, thus you can't know if something is going to be patented in the near future, and there are ways to delay the patent processing so that you can get even more possible profit from doing a thing like this, iirc the guy that patented car in the usa did something like this.

and really, if nothing has happened to the system in little under 100(!) years after that guy pulled his trick and got license fees for basically doing nothing(he never built a car before he lost to ford in court), i fail to see why the system would be changed in the near future..

Re:jpeg alternative?

[cybermace5]

Why even bother? You've got so much history of violation (I know you've converted images to JPEG without paying royalties!), that you should just keep using it like the hardened criminal you are.

They can't sue ALL of us before 2004, and there are still a lot of deep pockets for them to get to.

Too bad Sony doesn't have a patent on registering ridiculous patents and suing only the people you think you'll get the most money out of.

These people have the same scruples as spammers. They think that just because a lot of people banded together and made a lot of money, that they should get some of it for not doing anything.

Forgent should be paying US, the loyal users, for increasing the value of JPEG by making it a popular standard!

Claiming patent right

[nuggz]

The point of patenting is that you publish the patent in detail, freely and clear for the world to see your idea. And that you have an exclusive right to this invention.

When you make something it is your job to make sure you aren't using someone elses invention, that they have published, not their job to track you down.

Re:Claiming patent right

[nuggz]

Freely published at the US Patent office.

http://www.uspto.gov/
Patent #5 960 411

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1= PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5960411.WKU.&OS=PN/5960411&RS=PN/ 5960411

Re:Claiming patent right

[Waffle Iron]

When you make something it is your job to make sure you aren't using someone elses invention, that they have published, not their job to track you down.

The patent office has almost 10e+7 patents on file, probably comprising about 10e+8 claims written in a mind-numbingly obfuscated language. I'm sure every developer has the time to sift through all of these every time a clever idea pops into his head.

Let's see... if you spent one minute considering each claim, you'd know your new idea is free and clear after only 190 years of work! Oh wait, many patents are expired, and most don't apply to your field of work. It might only be 10 years.

Apparently, it took the whole world almost 2 decades to discover that there was a patent covering JPEG.

Not exactly JPEG patents

[200_success]

Actually, if you read the patents linked from the article, they aren't even patents on JPEG. They make claims on the use of compressed storage formats in digital cameras, such as JPEG.

• #6,496,222 Digital camera with memory format initialization
• #6,323,899 Process for use in electronic camera
• #6,233,010 Electronic still video camera with direct personal computer (PC) compatible digital format output
• #6,094,219 Electronic still video camera with direct personal computer (PC) compatible digital format output
• #5,576,757 Electronic still video camera with direct personal computer (PC) compatible digital format output
• #5,138,459 Electronic still video camera with direct personal computer (PC) compatible digital format output

What digial camera doesn't have the capability to store compressed images? Nobody would buy a camera that wasted memory by storing uncompressed images. Therefore, these are essentially patents on digital cameras!

Re:Not exactly JPEG patents

[Raphael]

Therefore, these are essentially patents on digital cameras!

You are right. A better title for this article would be: "St.Clair wins $25M from Sony for digital camera patent".

Re:Not exactly JPEG patents

[Tablizer]

they aren't even patents on JPEG. They make claims on the use of compressed storage formats in digital cameras, such as JPEG.....Therefore, these are essentially patents on digital cameras!

Sounds like yet another case of patenting "using a computer to do X" where X ranges over anything and everything.

BTW, space probes have been using digital cameras for quite a while. I don't know when the first compression was used in such probes, but the Gallelio (sp?) probe did it at least in the mid 80's because its primary antenna would not open properly so they had to use a whimpier back-up antenna. To squeaze more images thru smaller bandwidth, they uploaded compression algorithms to the probe.

Re:Not exactly JPEG patents

[Tablizer]

space probes have been using digital cameras for quite a while. I don't know when the first compression was used in such probes, but the Gallelio probe did it at least in the mid 80's....

Now that I think about it, the Marineer 4 spacecraft that flew past Mars in 1965 used palette simplification, which can be considered a form of compression. Although the TV image from its cameras produced analog signals, the Marineer images were sent back as digital (binary) data. IIRC, the palette (grey-scale) composed of a smallesh integer range, like say 16 or 32 "steps".

After all, they would probably use real numbers if they had unlimited bandwidth or hardware speed. Using smallesh integers is a form of compression.

Thus, if the patent claim is for *any* compression of digitized camera info, prior art existed in the early 60's when the probe was built.

Gotta love NASA.

2004

[ajs]

Don't assume you're safe in 2004. If they can demonstrate that they were doing research into infringement since before the patent expired, I suspect they can press a case against anyone who did not pay them for back royaltees up to when it expired.

This means that you shoudl not be USING the patented technology UNTIL the patent expires.

Does anyone know EXACTLY what's covered? JPEG is huge and has many optional peices. If someone tells me what bits are patented I will start looking at public code to see what can be changed to preserve functionality while still providing JPEG access.

Fed up with kharma whores

[goldspider]

Every time ANYTHING having to do with patents is mentioned on Slashdot, the post by the parent inevitably shows up in one form or another.

It neither says anything new, or useful, for that matter, so why does it keep getting modded up? Where's my mod points when I need them? -1: Redundant!

Re:Fed up with kharma whores

[nattt]

Ok, so it's redundant.

What I want to know is how the hell do you force change on the patent system? We know what needs to be done to make it better, but how do we go about it??

Three letters...

[G. Waters]

P N G

Re:Three letters...

[G. Waters]

Hmm... PNG was ment to be a replacment for the GIF format, which is lossy due to compression. Same with PNG, as noted on it's webpage:

"better compression than GIF, typically 5% to 25% (but often 40% or 50% better on tiny images)"

Re:Three letters...

[Dex Ro]

GIF is a lossless file format; it is not lossy due to compression.

Since GIF only supports a 256-color palette, if you have to lose your color depth to convert your image to GIF you experience a "loss" which has nothing to do with the file format itself.

I can hear their attorneys now.

[luv_jeeps]

All of your JPEGs are belong to us.

Re:jpeg alternative?

[IamTheRealMike]

See here for info on getting transparent PNGs working in IE.

Re:Flame on you :)

[sogoodsofarsowhat]

Yes we only would use Nuclear weapons but not biological weapons on a civilian populace. (Now before you get your panties in a wad, i am pro war and do support the killing of anyone that opposses us, the USA :) but i also know my history!)

Looking for prior art (translation from patentese)

[XNormal]

Do you have evidence, in the form of an actual product or description in a publication that any of the following was invented prior to November 1990:

1. A digital camera equipped with a removable digital media and capable of storing the captured image in one of several user-selectable data formats.
2. A digital camera as in #1 with an option for letting the user select the compression ratio or other compression algorithm parameters.
3. A digital camera as in #1 with the removable media being a floppy disk.

These are what I believe to be their major claims. Remember that November 1990 is before the previous gulf war. You could access the Internet (if you were in a connected university) but there was no web. My PC was 8088-based and the world of music was still trying to recover from the 80s.

IANAPA, but think they may have a valid patent.

Please don't feed this troll....

[siskbc]

You'd think some slashdotters would actually be able to spot trolls by now. Boggles the mind.

Wavelets not much more complex than DCT

[yerricde]

JPEG2000 uses wavelets, which is good, but requires more processing power.

No they don't. JPEG2000's wavelets are about as mathematically complex as JPEG's cosine transform, and possibly even faster because unlike the DCT, JPEG2000's wavelets require only shifts and adds to compute.

Too many patents

[yerricde]

patents are disclosed

Patents are issued faster than one person can read them, even if one person does nothing but read patent claims for sixteen hours a day.

Could somebody [who knows for sure] clear this up?

[rigmort]

I'm humbly confused by the difference between 25m and 25mm.

I get marketing reports at work and, at least in that context, 25m means $25,000, and 25mm would denote $25,000,000.

Is it case sensitive? Just curious.

My favourite quote

[dark-nl]

"All this wheeling and dealing, it's not for money, it's for fun! Money is just the way we keep score."

Just another reason to throw money at Xiph

[Sloppy]

As if it weren't already perfectly clear how urgent this is.

And the next problem...

[dark-nl]

How do you know whether or not it's patented? There's hundreds of thousands of potentially applicable patents, in all sorts of languages, with clauses written in mind-numbing detail (and the clauses are deliberately written to be both broad and obscure). Furthermore, you'd have to figure out whether or not a patented algorithm is equivalent to yours, which is a hard problem in general (this is how LZW got patented twice).

The bottom line is, you can never be sure that a program or standard is free from patents.

Re:jpeg alternative?

[y4h0oo]

It's strange how on that web site the PNG logo is in JPEG :
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/img_png/pnglogo-blk. jpg

Re:Looking for prior art (translation from patente

[saihung]

In 1990, I had what I thought was a spiffy NEC Powermate 286/10 with EGA. I thought that a greyscale hand scanner was the height of digital imaging tech. The only (removable?) ram devices I knew of at the time were ISA cards with battery backups, which don't lend themselves to cameras. There was not yet any such thing as PCMCIA ram cards. As far as I know, the first digital camera with a floppy disk was (ta-da) the Sony Mavica, which didn't come around until what, 1996 or 1997? The patent was non-obvious at the time, so +5 for having a good idea and -50 for not doing anything at all to try to implement it and letting other people do all of the hard work.

Balderdash!

[c0d3fu]

The day I don't have to get a plugin for Gimp to write a simple JPEG or GIF format picture is a day I will enjoy in 2004. For christ's sake - JPEG files are as ubiquitous as the pirated programs that create them, so give it a rest and make the file format public already!

let's doing something about this

[ooguru]

We should revolt on these types of patent lawsuits. Check out http://www.bustpatents.com/ for some information about this. Donate your time or money to fighting this issue.

Re:jpeg alternative?

[ortholattice]

Technically, a better alternative might be DjVu since it allows lossy compression like JPEG as well as lossless. For some kinds of images it is even smaller than JPEG (5-10 times smaller is claimed for color scanned documents and 2 times smaller for photos). Practically, the drawback is that it is not supported directly by most browsers but requires a plugin, so it is currently useful only on sites with a specialized audience, until (and if) browsers start supporting it natively.

HOLY BULLSHIT

[CrazyJim0]

Look at how lame a patent is:

An electronic still camera comprising a lens, shutter, and exposure control system, a focus and range control circuit, a solid state imaging device incorporating a Charge Coupled Device (CCD) through which an image is focused, a digital control unit through which timing and control of an image for electronic processing is accomplished, an Analog-to-Digital (A/D) converter circuit to convert the analog picture signals into their digital equivalents, a pixel buffer for collecting a complete row of an image's digital equivalent, a frame buffer for collecting all rows of an image's digital equivalent, and a selectively adjustable digital image compression and decompression algorithm that compresses the size of a digital image and selectively formats the compressed digital image to a compatible format for either the IBM Personal Computer and related architectures or the Apple Macintosh PC architecture as selected by the operator so that the digital image can be directly read into most word processing, desktop publishing, and data base software packages including means for executing the appropriate selected decompression algorithm; and a memory input/output interface that provides both temporary storage of the digital image and controls the transmission and interface with a standard Personal Computer (PC) memory storage device such as a digital diskette. The digital diskette is removably inserted into the housing of the camera prior to use in recording digital image data.

Like I could copywright artificial intelligence, use of a computer, memory, and a program to simulate the intelligence of a human.

Just sending that to the patent office would probably get me millions of dollars down the line, how can someone stand up to challenge this? Cuz while I'm not a big fan of corporations, SONY shouldn't have to pay for this.

Re:HOLY BULLSHIT

[angle_slam]

Like I could copywright artificial intelligence, use of a computer, memory, and a program to simulate the intelligence of a human.

First of all, it's spelled copyright. Second, you can't copyright ideas. That's what patents are for. Third, as absurd an idea it may seem today to say that someone invented the digital camera, the patent was filed back in 1990. It may seem obvious now, but the standard is whether it was obvious at the time it was invented. You can bet that Sony tried their damndest (probably spending over $1M in legal fees) to prove that it was obvious. They couldn't do so. Could by a sign that the patents are valid.

Re:HOLY BULLSHIT

[knowledgepeacewi]

perhaps you could.

But it costs money to patent something.

Are you willing to spend $1000 on your document?

Make them eat each other

[1,$d]

Why not encrypt your source code, encrypt your executables (doesn't even have to be well encrypted), and "don't use" the patented algorithms. "I have discovered a novel algorithm that does the same thing a new way. Trade secret."

Then if patent lawyers file a claim against you, sic some DMCA lawyers on them and let them eat each other.

Rough justice for stupid governance.

Re: No, the first Mavica debuted in 1981

[EMIce]

On the agenda today..

1. Patent digital car equipped with a removable digital media capable of storing route and diagnostic data in one of several user selectable formats

2. #1 with an option for letting the user select the compression ratio or other compression algorithm parameters.

3. #1 with the removable media being a floppy disk.

The CCD has always been solid state, and in fact Sony's first Mavica unit dates back to 1981. It had removable media. To be able to patent any sort of digital data capture device, but with the addition of compression, is folly. The suing company simply patented the easily forseable combination of existing technologies. Maybe a special technologies court needs to be made to handle these kinds of things.

Re:Could somebody [who knows for sure] clear this

[angle_slam]

I'm humbly confused by the difference between 25m and 25mm.

25m is about 82 feet, while 25mm is about 1 inch.

:-)

Re:Could somebody [who knows for sure] clear this

[rigmort]

Smartass... I guess it _is_ Friday. I still want to know, though.

Re:Could somebody [who knows for sure] clear this

[bgehman]

25m is about 82 feet, while 25mm is about 1 inch.

rigmort, the previous post was correct:
m = meters
mm = milimeters

If you are talking money:
$25,000 = $25K
$25,000,000 = $25M

When it comes to intellectual property..

[NewtonsLaw]

When it comes to intellectual property, let he who lives by the lawyer, die by the lawyer!

Re:Enough already...money=reproductive success.

[macshune]

It's to improve one's reproduce success, right?

Or as Batman said:

"Chicks dig the car."

Getting as much material wealth as possible will help your kids reproduce and help carry on your genes for a long time.

IMHO, the effect is partially mitigated by modern society 'cause it keeps rich guys in check and such. But if contraception and prevailing notions of monogamy didn't exist...and hell, stratified society, rich guys would have a lot more children. Just look at late 19th century mormons. Average # of kids in the highest classes is ~28. And that's with crappy medical technology.

Re: No, the first Mavica debuted in 1981

[XNormal]

To be able to patent any sort of digital data capture device, but with the addition of compression, is folly.

What format did this first Mavica use? The patent is not on the addition of compression - it's on letting the user select the use of a standard format common on Macs (PICT) or on PCs (I think it was PCX at the time) depending on what machine the user was expecting to read the pictures on.

Yes, it's a lame patent, but it was novel and nonobvious at the time.

Re:jpeg alternative?

[njdj]

Yes - the PNG format. it's free, works as well(if not better than Jpeg)

This is ill-informed rubbish and should not have been modded up to its current level of 5. PNG is a replacement for GIF, not a replacement for JPEG. JPEG is a lossy compression scheme intended for photographic images, which can achieve extremely high compression ratios. PNG is a lossless scheme applicable to any kind of image. For photos, you can easily get a factor of 40 compression with JPEG on an image where PNG would give you a factor of only 5. On the other hand, PNG gives excellent compression on line drawings, which JPEG compresses poorly. Apart from the fact that they can both compress images, they have nothing in common and neither is a replacement for the other.

Well...

[Lonath]

Since there are so many broad software patents out there that reinvent things that have been known for a long time and are used all over the place, it's no longer possible to use computers without violating those patents, perhaps software patent supporters need to be forced to be consistent.

Since using computers --> knowingly violating software patents

knowingly violating software patents --> not respecting software patents

not respecting software patents --> your software patents aren't enforceable

Companies that want to try to enforce their software patents should have to prove that they don't use computers, and they can't use them ever again so that we can all be sure that they respect software patents. That's a small price to pay for being consistent and not being a lying hypocrite when going out to defend your IP space right? You merely have to respect other peoples' IP, as you would have others respect your IP. How hard can that be? It's not like computers are in everything these days.

And don't bother flaming me over this. The very fact that you're reading this means that you're knowingly violating software patents this very moment, or perhaps you're getting this as a printout from someone else who was knowingly violating software patents to read this. So, you don't respect software patents, either.

Re:Well...

[knowledgepeacewi]

Since there are so many broad software patents out there that reinvent things that have been known for a long time and are used all over the place, it's no longer possible to use computers without violating those patents,
Please give examples of one or two. Using linux I can probably avoid any of these.

perhaps software patent supporters need to be forced to be consistent. Companies that want to try to enforce their software patents should have to prove that they don't use computers, and they can't use them ever again so that we can all be sure that they respect software patents.
I could use a commadore 64 to write code that runs on an intel pc...or even pen and paper. You can't prove that I used an infringing computer or methods to develop my software.

It's not like computers are in everything these days.
They are and 99% of them (guesstimation) are not in violation of an patent laws. Which blows a hole in your arguement. The one in your thermostat for instance. Thank you.

And don't bother flaming me over this. The very fact that you're reading this means that you're knowingly violating software patents this very moment, or perhaps you're getting this as a printout from someone else who was knowingly violating software patents to read this. So, you don't respect software patents, either.
So you wrote this to hear yourself speak? I doubt that. Not asking for constructive criticism of your arguements is the surest way to always have crappy arguements. You have no idea that the method I'm using to access slashdot violates any patents. This blows another hole in your arguement with yourself.

You have interesting undeveloped thought patterns. good day.

Re:Well...

[Lonath]

Little people are getting sued over doing business over the Internet. Slashdot itself uses .gifs. I violate the .gif patent every time I go to /. Maybe you use lynx or something. Do you have a webpage up? Until last summer you could have gotten sued by BT over hyperlinks for your website. They lost the case, but it was still something that was known waaay before they got the patent and they still managed to drag a company to court for months before it was thrown out. Do you have a program called XPaint in your version of Linux? I do. Have you ever distributed a copy of linux? If it had this program on linux, then you were distributing patented software. Even if you did it before you knew that Unisys was going to become anal about this. I admit that if you sit in your house and use your computer by yourself and never tell anyone what you're doing, and never distribute linux then you're not infringing. That's by definition since patents (AFAIR) don't cover private use. But, if you want to use the Internet, there are lots of things that you use and you probably don't think about that may be patented like the examples above. The point isn't whether or not these things get thrown out eventually, the point is that the legal system is willing to give the patent owners a chance to go after people, thereby costing the victims a lot of money and time.

I could use a commadore 64 to write code that runs on an intel pc...or even pen and paper. You can't prove that I used an infringing computer or methods to develop my software.

And you would never use any other type of computer anywhere else in your life? Do you believe that you have to go back to C64's to avoid infringement, or do you think that a modern OS on a modern computer can be run while doing the normal things that people do without infringing patents in any way?

I know that my post was a rant, but you're being pedantic here. Do you honestly believe that there are companies out there engaging in patent lawsuits and getting software patents that don't use modern computers? That don't use anything over the Internet that has been declared off limits by some company dredging up some 15 year old patent nobody ever heard of? I suppose that anything is possible, but not very likely. I would be willing to put up DO you code on a C64 to avoid patent infringement issues? Probably not. I don't. I will accept that peolpe who only use 20-year old+ computers and don't use the Internet can be sure that they're free of infringing on patents. And anyway, making software doesn't have anything to do with software patents, so the standard should be ever using modern computers.

They are and 99% of them (guesstimation) are not in violation of an patent laws.

I don't consider most of those devices to be computers. I think it would be very hard to go through life without being able to use real computers of some kind (including PDA's and such).

So you wrote this to hear yourself speak? I doubt that. Not asking for constructive criticism of your arguements is the surest way to always have crappyarguements. You have no idea that the method I'm using to access slashdot violates any patents. This blows another hole in your arguement with yourself.

You're right. It was a rant. OTOH, chances are, you ARE using a modern computer and you are accessing this site using that computer and you are infringing on somebody's patent while using that computer. And even if you're not accessing this post with modern computers, then you have in the past used them and you will in the future. Nice way to miss the point of my rant by coming up with a lawyerly pedantic counterexample. Just tonight I learned that somebody was still using an Atari 800 to do her word processing, so I know there are people who don't use mdoern machines. But I seriosuly doubt that you are, and I would guess that something in the process you used to get to this site v

Re:Well...

[knowledgepeacewi]

Since you did me the honor of replying to my criticism...
I might as well respond to what I can of this. Thank you for offering examples and links to some of the things that you are afraid of.

I would suggest that the people who are doing this fighting back at the first site are either scamming or doing the right thing. Using the legal system to solve their battles. When the time comes for me to do the same thing, I will do what is necessary to protect my interests in court. I will not however yell fire where there is no fire. Using this kind of apporach merely gets you noticed once, and then ignored forever.

Being ignorant of the rules that I may be breaking is by no means a valid defense, but there are plenty of other legal tactics that I could employ if/when the time arises for me to defend myself. So there is nothing to fear and no reason to scare other people especially not with rants.

A business should just pass these expenses on to their customers. Or use it as a PR stunt.

As to lynx and gifs and all of that, I'll let you figure it out...at least you are thinking outside your box now.

I know that most people don't care or are willing to ignore software patents, but I don't like the fact that big companies can take something that most people do every day and turn it into a potential lawsuit minefield. Ah well.
This is the heart of your arguement. I agree with it. Alan Greenspan agrees with it. Most people in the world agree with it. So, its up to all of us to work to fix the system. Mr. Greenspan does it by writing, you and I do it by bickering on slashdot. hmmm, I like his solution best.
In any event, when it effects enough people, things will change...or be ignored.

Thank you for considering me a teacher:
pendantic: of being a pendant: a formalist or precisionist in teaching. I like that.

Re:jpeg alternative?

[evilviper]

You can do one of two things.

1) Bend to corporate pressure and do what you are told.

OR

2) Use PNG (with a note for IE users) and let IE users complain to Microsoft, or perhaps they will swith to a different browser.

It's like the saying (paraphrasing): The people who refuse to accept things as they are, are the ones who change the world.

VP3

[David_Bloom]

Rutroo...doesn't the On2 VP3 codec use DCT compression, too? (see its faq) This could doom OGG Theora...until 2004, at least

Re:jpeg alternative?

[evilviper]

Gifs/pngs are better suited for drawn images with a small variation in detail, where jpeg is better for photographs or other images with high detail.

I'm a bit confused about what you mean by "better". Are you basing this purely on filesize? You certainly can't be talking about quality, because PNGs are losless and will always look better.

Perhaps filesize versus quality? Of course that would be subjective as well.

Personally, I think PNG is better than JPEG for the same reasons that "digital" is better than "analog". With JPEG, if you make a single modification, you loose quality. After a few generations of changes (or conversions, or whatever else) the nice hi-quality JPEG image looks like crap, while the PNG has the same quality after 100 generations as it did in the 1st generation.

Re:jpeg alternative?

[pjp6259]

Browser support for displaying PNG is not complete, but it absolutely attrocious for printing large PNGs. I have PNGs that are larger than a single page, and have not been able to find a single browser than prints them correctly.

When I tell IE to use a seperate program to handle PNGs, I can get it to work, but that is it.

I've only tried Netscape (windows & linux), Mozilla, IE, and Konqueror.

Re:There is a fine line... always is for the Sopra

[knowledgepeacewi]

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

Mafia implies illegal. If what they are doing is illegal, it would be easy.

But it is legal. In AD&D terms they are Lawful Evil. They follow the law and have every legal right to do so.

If you don't like this kind of behavior. Put your vote and your money where your mouth is and change the law.

Re: No, the first Mavica debuted in 1981

[gozar]

I own the first Mavica, the FD-7 (the other one is the FD-5, but it doesn't have zoom). It saves its pictures as jpegs. I don't think there are any other options (it's been awhile since I've used it).

Re: No, the first Mavica debuted in 1981

[EMIce]

What format did this first Mavica use? The patent is not on the addition of compression - it's on letting the user select the use of a standard format common on Macs (PICT) or on PCs (I think it was PCX at the time) depending on what machine the user was expecting to read the pictures on.

Yes, it's a lame patent, but it was novel and nonobvious at the time.

And that is non-obvious? I don't know the technicalities of patents, but even in 1987 I wouldn't call this non-obvious, and certainly not novel. At that time different formats existed between pc and mac, and they already shared the same medium. I'd call this a trivial solution to a straightforward engineering problem.

If I was designing the embedded system for such a camera and if the two target systems I was designing for used different formats but the same media, it would be obvious to code both formats into the product.

This doesn't require innovation. Should companies be able to patent switching between modes on any device? Maybe some sort of novel method of switching, or the mode itself, but not the switching.

Idea to fix patent office problems:

[jfisherwa]

Patent the act/method of filing a patent application, then refuse to license it to anyone.

Redundant, overrated?

[zonix]

Well excuse the hell out of me!

Go ahead, read the previously linked articles on Forgent's own site.

Forgent may be the most striking local example of tech companies looking to exploit their portfolio of patents.

"... mining of patents ... for rockect boosters"

Just how many deals? Forgent's chief technical officer, Ken Kalinoski, shows off a two-page list of companies that Forgent thinks have used the technology that yielded the first two deals. Of the many possible uses for the technology, this list is only of digital camera makers. "And," he says, smiling, "it's in fairly small type." Forgent plans to contact every one.

"Basically, the team entered the mine looking for coal," Kalinoski says. "After some picking at the top layers of rock, we found a small diamond. Upon this find, we retrenched and changed our strategy to no longer look for coal, but rather look for large chunks of diamond".

All these are news paper cut-outs you can find on their site. I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you want to file a patent and make money of licensing, that's fine. But when you file a patent and grant royalty-free use, wait for people to adopt your technology, and then suddenly decide to charge people for using the technology, then that's wrong. You have to second guess their motives?

z

layperson?

[rtscts]

I thought it had to be non-obvious to someone "skilled in the art" or somesuch?

Re:layperson?

[dougmc]

I thought it had to be non-obvious to someone "skilled in the art" or somesuch?

From here --

Under section 103 of the patent statute, if the claimed subject matter would have been "obvious" to a hypothetical "person of ordinary skill" in the relevant art(s) at the time the inventor invented it, then the claim cannot be patented. [35 USC 103]

As I understood it, a layperson knew something of the art in question, but wasn't a master. Looking it up now, maybe it doesn't even mean that. You may be closer than my statement to the truth :)

Either way, the patent office doesn't seem to apply this rule very often. How about the patent for `method of exercising a feline with a beam of coherent light' or whatever the name was? My two year old daughter could figure that out.

patents are good

[nataxia]

Honestly people, try and speak in less general terms. "Patents" are not evil. This or that patent may be -- ALL patents are clearly not. The grand economy you all benefit from grows because of entrepreneurs. These are people who assume great risk in pursuing ideas. Patents are intended to protect those pursuits. They expire after, I believe, 20 years. This encourages the inventor (short period of personal reward for effort), and benefits society (patent protection encourages development of ideas which are, after 20 years, released into the public domain). Perhaps the open-source-heavy tone of slashdot is clouding minds. Here's some advice: That's the real world out there. If y'all want to slave for free so that other people can profit off your labour, that's great. It's noble, though strange, given Marx. But here's some advice: try thinking of something useful, even indispensable, building it, and patenting it. You might just become important, instead of reactionary and out of touch. Or you can just keep pumping money into the pockets of Linus' and Eric's et. al. Oh right. And Bill. Self interest people. Wake up. Nobody cares about your rosy-eyed geekscapes.