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31 Lawsuits Filed Over Alleged JPEG Patent
dcrouch writes "Compression Labs has initiated a lawsuit in the Eastern District of Texas against 31 major companies for infringement of its 4,698,672 patent. The patent, filed in 1986, includes 46 claims for various embodiments of digital signal compression technology and reportedly covers JPEG compression. From the dates on the face of the patent, it appears that it will expire in October 2004. This looming date may have prompted the suit. Compression Labs will certainly have a fight on its hands. A major question will be why the patentee waited so long to stake its claim. The Eastern District of Texas court has established special patent rules that help speed the progression of litigation."
Maybe. But given the two formats are for such completely different purposes I fail to see how this is relevant. PNG is much more obviously a competitor for GIF than for JPG.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
PNG is there to replace GIF, not JPG.
JPG is still the best image format for photographs.
well, I wonder how much they expect to make from the lawsuit in the short time period, since it takes little time to switch to alternative file formats.
Ok, what the hell is wrong with this picture: I patent an idea. Let the whole world use it as a standard for webpages/compressed images. Let my patent be used in technologies like digital cameras and the like without one single word of infringement or anything. I let this transpire for almost 18 years then BAM! i sue everyone who is using my patent with only a few months left on my patent. It's bullshit if you ask me. Why didnt the damn company sue for patent infringement before it got so out of control? Why is a company allowed to do this. In all honesty you should either do your best to enforce your patent or all you get is a product the no one else can patent. God damned this world is outta control
The suing company bought another company that originally held the patent. Then waited a bit, tried to "negotiate" (I read that as "extort") with some big name companies, and has now chosen to sue after discussions failed.
My solution to this particular problem: Do not allow companies to hold patents. All patents must be held by an individual, and cannot be transferred. If an individual wants to license exclusive usage to a company that's fine (the company can sponsor the holders ligigation if needed) but the company cannot hold it.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
...browsers that display JPEG, and graphics apps, like the gimp? The patent seems pretty cut and dried-they own it, this isn't a SCO vague case here, and I'm surprised the companies are attempting a defense, because chances are they are going to lose unless there's something here that isn't evident, like this company gave it away, opened it up gratis, or something in the past I am not aware of..
Sucks too, just viewing websites now with images turned on is a hassle with this old machine and slow dialup, I usually leave them off unless I REALLY need to see the image for navigation purposes or it's a news item I want to see, etc. And that's with low k JPEGs. If they were BMPs or PNGs it would be much worse.. hmm..
Would it also mean that all the millions of websites out there that are using JPEGs are in potential violation if they haven't paid a license fee of some sort?
This is nutz, but there ya go on software patents, we either live with them as the cyberworld gets more complicated, or scrap the whole notion of patenting intangibles and use a different business model with "computing", something I am greatly in favor of.
That's a loaded question. When I create audio files, the answer is: I'd absolutely store wav (and similar) files on my hard drive. Why would I ever want a compressed master?
When I rip a CD, I store them as MP3's. The point is that original files shouldn't be compressed using a lossy format (unless you don't care...I do). When it's time to distribute the file, sure, crunch it down.
-Turkey
People who would give up functionality for a bit of security deserve neither.
PNG is designed as a direct replacement and enhancement for GIF. There is, by design, nothing you can do with GIF that you can't do with PNG*. On the other hand, PNG does have more to offer that GIF. Your statement is like saying "Mozilla might get hit by patents, let's all switch back to Mosaic instead!".
* 1) Animations: technically, that's MNG, so ok, PNG can't do that.
2) GIF can also do quite a bit more than most people know, like overlay text outside of the image area and stuff, but nobody uses it. Today, GIFs are de facto: lossless, 8-bit paletted, multi-image, and with binary (on-off) transparency. Nothing else.
BZZT! Wrong again!
People had lossless compression of images before they had lossy compression. Think gzip. Or compress. Or whatever we had before that.
Lossy image (or film) compression is an advancement over lossless, since it gives a drastic reduction in file size for a minimal loss in image quality. If you really don't like the way the lossy image looks, even at the highest quality setting, you can still fall back on lossless compression, it will just be a lot bigger (meaning more disk space / bandwidth).
Or are you referring, but just failing to name, another lossy format which is superior to JPEG?
Compared to those lossy processes, the difference between a PNG master and high quality JPEG master is negligible. See here for example. Note how the high-quality lossy jpegs are indistuingishable from the lossless formats...
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Kinda like the oh-so-much rumored wavelets that I've yet to see materialize.
JPEG2000 uses wavelet compression and do look better than regular JPEG to me (for the same size of course). Only problem is that it's covered with patents.
So, wavelet formats have materialzed, but where are the open-source implementations? I want the Ogg equivalent for picture formats!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
All patents are published. That's one of the conditions of them being granted.
What's your definition of a submarine patent then?
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
The abstract of the patent specifically states
"The present invention specifically relates to methods and apparatus useful in video compression systems..."
and
"Typically, the system determines differences between the current input signals and the previous input signals..."
(Emphasis mine)
JPEG is not a video compression system, nor does it use differences with previous "signals." MPEG, WMV, and before that Indeo, Cinepak, and other methods of compressing video (almost always) do.
Xesdeeni
One of the problems with ideas is that multiple people can have the same one independantly. It's really hard to accept that just because an idea is original to you it may have occured to others.
As part of my job, I sometimes apply for patents. (Which first goes to an internal company board to be judged if it's worth the cost of a real search-and-file) I've submitted 5 so far, and even though all of them we totally new concepts for me, only one of them survived a patent search. I have to admit that when the search committee has presented me with clear prior art, it's hard not to feel some sort of stupid "you sneaky bastards" type feelings directed at the party who thought of the idea before me. (Of course, being a sane person, I realize this is irrational, and get over it quickly.) Still, it's a blow to the ego.
A the corporate level, I don't think things are much different. I can see some senior mucky-muck at a company which had been issued an overly broad patent for say, "Using a cathode ray tube to display the output of a computer" having trouble seeing the difference between reason and greed.
Sometimes corporations have larger egos and senses of entitlement than even the most arrogant people. I suspect some manager got sort on funds, heard some tech say something like: "Heh, yeah, techinically we own JPEG..." and got visions of an easy buck.
Compared to those lossy processes, the difference between a PNG master and high quality JPEG master is negligible.
Great comparison. For one generation. But when you're editing pics you don't want to keep saving to a lossy format because each save will increase the noise. How would that pic look after 10 - 20 generations of saves as a JPEG?
You can compare single generations all you want and you'll get the same results (the JPEG looks great!) but that absolutely does not indicate thats how you should save your masters.
TW
To save diskspace, perhaps?
It's your master! You don't want a lossy compressed master!... that's insane!
Note how the high-quality lossy jpegs are indistuingishable from the lossless formats...
Of course they are distinguishable, they're "lossy". Blow them up, manipulate them, do whatever you do, yeah, if you just look at them they're indistinguishable, but if you do anything else with them, the smashed-up hard edges, "ringing" artifacts, and all that stuff will quickly cause problems.
Ugh. I hate asking people for photos or clipart for websites because I know they'll do something to it to make it "easier to email".
Cropping, framing, adjusting the contrast and colours for a final image is horrible once somebody's done this to an image.
My solution to this particular problem: Do not allow companies to hold patents. All patents must be held by an individual, and cannot be transferred. If an individual wants to license exclusive usage to a company that's fine (the company can sponsor the holders ligigation if needed) but the company cannot hold it.
That would be nice, except most research is not done by individuals. If a company sinks loads of money into R&D and ends up inventing a 100X better moustrap, who should get to hold the patent? They've certainly developed a novel and useful invention, yet no individual could claim to have invented the device. Under your system the new moustrap could not be patented. I think this is a bad thing because companies would have a greatly reduced incentive to do R&D, and as a result much less R&D would get done.
Everybody say it with me now: estoppel. if they waited this long to assert their patent rights, while all along constructively assuring the public that they wouldn't sue, they have to be equitably estopped in some manner. (meaning they waited too long and by their conduct they lead everyone to believe that they wouldn't be sued, so they lost their right to sue here.)
.02
Just my
Until a few years ago, US patents were not published until granted and the term was 17 years from grant. Consequently, an application could be kept pending for 20 years or more by filing continuation and continuation in part applications, all of which would have been secret. The aim was for the patent to emerge into a well developed industry to maximise potential income. Patents obtained with this tactic are what are referred to as submarine patents.
Now almost all US patent applications are published 18 months from the filing/priority date and the term is 20 years from the filing date. Thus, the existence of the application is public and delaying grant does not push the expiry date into the future, thereby removing the rationale for submarine patents.
Could someone please call the recording studios and let them know they should just record to 8 track tape, and encode the audio not once but twice as 128kbps MP3s and only then rip them to CD before selling them, just because they will have lost information between the singer and the microphone?
I think maybe you're not familiar with the prupose of masters. In a nutshell, you set up your environment in order to minimize the information loss, then you record that information as perfectly as possible. That pretty much applies to the process of recording anything. The master needs to be of the highest quality possible because every generation created from that master will _at_least_ share the same defects and artifacts.
the difference between a PNG master and high quality JPEG master is negligibleYou're right, but PNG and JPEG are compressed, and again the parent poster was talking about uncompressed masters (his analog was WAV vs. MP3.) The difference between RAW or TIFF(ie. the WAV or CD in his example) and JPEG or PNG (ie. the MP3) are monumental.
1. File lots of patents
2. Don't enforce them
3. Get people to use them
4. Wait long time
5. Sue
6. Profit!
Heh.. looks like a plan that actually works!
So can we please have a stop to the whingers about missing mp3 in RH/Fedora.
This is exactly THE reason why it is not included - ie: even though the patent has not as yet been enforced, it still could be (and mp3 has a lot longer to sue)
And for mods, this is about as on-topic as it gets (YRO etc)
you might want to run this strategy of looking for patents before selling your product by a patent attorney sometime. you're setting yourself up for treble damages from willful infringement.
With great power comes great fan noise.
I'll take mine in PSD format thanks. With layers, text, notes and all sorts of other good stuff there's no reason not to use this format until you're ready to dump out a JPEG or similar.
The post you're answering (and most posts in this thread) is specifically referencing photos. PSD is fine but its intent is not for storing photos, nor is it necessary for photos. A photo is by definition one layer. And TIFF can support any exif data/notes that you'd want included, along with color space information. It can also support a variety of compression schemes (both lossless and lossy) and it's supported on all platforms in a variety of image viewers (including the native image viewers built into most OS's). It's the best format for storing photo masters.
There's nothing particularly wrong with PSD as a format for photos and you're not going to lose anything with it in terms of data loss, but you do lose compatibility, and you do lose compression options, with no real gain. If you want copyright info layers or whatever on top of your photos, that's fine, but you're just giving up a bit of compatibility and probably file size in the process. Most photographers prefer storing bare masters anyway, with no alterations at all, and also having PSD versions of whatever photos they want to alter and/or are in the process of altering. It's just a bit easier/safer that way.
I understand your pain with JPEGs and how they are overused. However, for large resolution photographs, try this experiment: Convert the file to a PNG and also convert it to a JPEG. Use a program that allows you to create a (lossless*) JPEG. In Photoshop, manually set the compression to 12. I remember PhotoShop 6 had 10 as the max value, but you can enter 12 in the box. Now compare the two images. Zoom in. Inspect them side by side. Now look at the file sizes. You may decide that JPEG files can be very effective as permanent storage format. If you want more control over the color, get a better JPEG converter like Web Image Guru.
* Lossless meaning that no transformed data is thrown away. Of course, the whole DCT process will create "loss," but it should be truly negligible.
Oh, BTW, I thought PhotoShop allowed for CMYK JPEGs?
A major question will be why the patentee waited so long to stake its claim.
Because they're dicks. We've seen this with GIF
1. Obtain a patent to something. (prerequisites: 1. You can fog a mirror 2. You can afford the application fee 3. You have third grade writing skills)
2. Don't enforce it until and unless it becomes a widely used standard.
3. Start threatening people and rake in the cash from those few companies that cave out of fear of the courts.
4. Profit.
5. Laugh at being one of the few people who doesn't have a "???" step.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
People keep saying that .jpeg is still the best for photographs over .gif (without question) and .png (possibly). But that's not saying a lot, because .jpegs still suck, they just are not that good even for photographs. There has to be a better (yes, yes, yes, lossy) compression algorithm than .jpeg that can be developed Open Source...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
JPEG2000 is a much better format, maybe now we'll see some quick adoption.
If Microsoft added native JPEG2000 support to Internet Explorer, you can bet it would come into widespread usage extremely quickly.