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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."
I thought there was some specific legislation to stop "submarine patents" like this?
Beefy.
Maybe this will be a call for everyone to switch to PNG.
The patent, filed in 1986, includes 46 claims for various embodiments of digital signal compression technology
So they own all forms of digital compression ?
If anything, this will make JPG a more popular format than it already is. If the patent doesn't go through, all programs will be able to use JPG compression for free instead of resorting to PNG. Some peopl4e prefer JPG and won't want to switch... so this might be a boon for providing more JPGs in more applications.
Not that I really support this, because I prefer PNG as well.
I know gimp doesn't have gif native because of the license but does have JPEG. Does this mean that they are going to get targeted for using JPEG?
Evolution or ID?
Looking at the list of companies in that list, I see one interesting omission from the list of companies being sued, namely Microsoft. I find this slightly surprizing given the number of MS products that use jpegs, doubly so if the aim of this exercise is to raise cash for the patent holders.
They can't be worried about hitting companies that can afford lots of lawyers as there are some big names in that list of companies already.
Anybody know whether the beast of Redmond has paid for a license?
In a situation like a JPEG patent, the patentholder would want to wait until the technology was at its usage and value peak before trying to sue. That way, they stand the best chance of scaring the defendant into a quick and expensive settlement, rather than fight a behemoth on something they could care less about.
stuff |
It seems to be, based on the links here that they don't own JPEG, but have patented a technology that is identical to JPEG. JPEG developed the same technology seperate from them (correct me if I am wrong).
What I am wondering about is the new JPEG2000 standard. Do they own that?
Just FYI JPEG2000 is very similar to JPEG in design except it uses the Discrete Wavelet Transform instead of the Discrete Cosine Transform to transform the 8x8 pixel blocks. It is less blocky than JPEG in general.
Seems to me this is a little stupid as neither company invented DCT or even the Huffman and run-length coding that make up the components of this scheme, and all of the components are public domain intellectual property.
This litigation seems like a cash grab more than protecting there IP. They wait until everyone is freely using it (and for the most part believing it is a free technology) and then they sue the largest companies using it (hey why arn't they sueing Microsoft?).
"Take that Lisa's beliefs!" - Homer Simpson
Patents are like property in many ways. In the case of property, to retain ownership one must defend its boundaries. There's thing called adverse possession, where if someone encroaches on your property in "an open and notorious manner", and does so for ten years, then they can become the new legal owner of the property. I'd bet a similar adverse possession argument would hold in this sort of patent scenario. BTW, IANAL.
Steve.
Okay, let's say I were to develop the perfect genetically engineered strain of corn, and patent my "invention" and publish a scientific paper on it. Now, lots of companies would like to sell this corn, and any half-decent biotech lab can reproduce my work.
Continuing, lets say that I didn't limit the reproductive viability of the corn in my engineering work. So after the first few paroducts came to market and there was an ample opportunity to harvest the kernals for commercial re-sale. Every Southern States and TSC has a house brand of Overzeetop Super Corn. It's everywhere - on the grocery shelves, in the newspapers, on the web...the corn is ubiquitous worldwide.
Here's my question: If, after a dozen years, I decide to sue every maker and distributer of my corn, do I really have a case?
Naturally, IANAL, but I do know that you can lose a trademark if it is not defended. This seems awfully similar, but the laws regarding these two are different. Is there an equivalent loss of rights for a patent?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
In his classic "Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman" Richard Feynman explains how he "earned" the patents on nuclear submarines and nuclear airplanes. At that time, neither technology existed. On the other hand, afaik he never tried to extort royalties from the US Navy for the USS Nautilus, so perhaps that doesn't count as a real submarine...
ForGent Networks, like SCO, gave up a product based business model and now persues the litigation business model. Such 'businesses' should forever be designated as a 'SCO class' businesses because the 'product' they sell is EXACTLY the same type of product Al Capone's thugs sold, protection from attack by Al Capone's gang, except that the courts become pawns of the business and send out the police to attack businesses. And, their employees appear to be composed mostly of lawyers, with an occasional geek lawn jockey to lend credibility to the term "technology".
Compression Labs never enforced the JPEG patent and now, with only months remaining before the patent expires greedy lawyers are trying to extort cash out of users.
The USTPO and/or Congress should outlaw submarine patents, and tighten rules to cancel patents if prior violations are massive and public knowledge but the patent holder has made no attempt to enforce the patent.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
While I agree that this is pretty shitty, you don't have to show due diligence in enforcing patent rights.
However, I'm inclined to think that if/when this goes to court, the judge is likely to frown on the obvious underhanded tactic employed by the patent holder. The only reason that one would wait this long to enforce patents rights is
1) You didn't know your technology was being used. If they try and use this, I'll laugh, there's now way that anyone could not know how widespread JPEG is.
or 2) You wanted to maximize potential infringment in order to maximize possible lawsuit earnings. Very likely, and very shadey. I don't know if there is a mechanism in place to prevent this.
The patent that is quoted is really broad... it appears to not only cover JPEG, but any lossee image and video compression.
Ryan
Forgent must be like the most generous drug dealer in the world. "The first 10 zillion are free... after that, you gotta pay!" But honestly, how many of you geek posers suggesting PNG have actually had to build a website for a non-technical client? Client: "Hey, that site you built for us doesn't work - all the pictures are missing!" Geek: "Well, actually, I used PNG for the pictures. You need a compliant browser." Client: "What the heck is ping?" Geek: "Well, actually, its a far superior graphics format to JPEG. Its losseless, and ermmm, unencumbered by patent rights issues." Client: "If its so good, why are none of my pictures showing up?" Geek: "Well, actually, you need a standards complient browser. Internet Explorer didn't implement PNG properly. You really should be using Mozilla anyway -- its superior!" Client: "So you are saying I have to tell all my customers to use this Godzilla program to see my website?" Geek: "Well, actually, yes, it would be better for them all..." Client: "You're fired." *CLICK*
planet texture maps and more
The answer is easy. If your only goal is to make as much money as possible, would you file early when the product is not widely used and people have the option of using something else, or wait as long as possible so the technology is entrenched (harder for defendants to use another product), widely used, and you can get royalties for so many years (yes, you can get payments for past years)?
My father is a patent attorney and has stated that this is a common tactic. People are only surprised at this because it is a case that has crossed our radar.
Another thing: the first groups sued are carefully chosen to have deep pockets and be highly dependant on the technology. This increases the chance of a settlement out of court (they are also often given favorable terms if they settle quickly). The 'war chest' thus created is then used to fund other challenges. The litigants can then point at all the people who already caved when negotiating, "do you really want to fight us when all these companies have already found our position unassailable?"
The morals involved are highly questionable, but it can be very effective.
--YAAC (Yet Another Anonymous Coward)
Remember yesterday?
The first two Score-5 responses come up as follows:
and now the lawsuit announcement on the next day. Interesting coinky-dink.
Who are the groups involved? The 3D Industry Forum's web site has a FAQ containing a partial list of members:
Compare to the list of defendants in the Forgent suit:
Well, from my limited perspective, it appears to me that the groups are largely disjoint as the 3D forum is concerned with graphics and the lawsuit defendants are largely video imaging and photography related. Adobe apparently has its hands into both.
Somebody else already wondered by Microsoft wasn't listed, but I'd be more inclinded to ask, Why not Sony since they are into photography as well (Digicam, Cyber-shot). Maybe they have licensed JPEG, who knows?
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
I have my doubts about that. I bet a lot of people reinvent ideas all the time, and it just doesn't occur to them that it could be patent-able or already patented by someone. They just use it and get on with their jobs. For this guy's 5 ideas, I bet there were a 500 patented ideas that he reinvented, where it seemed so obvious to him, that it didn't even occur to him to submit or search.
For example, who hasn't reinvented the XORed-pixel graphic cursor? Our of the millions of programmers who have come up with it, only one actually thought, "Hey, maybe I can patent this."
It seems like having the arrogance to apply for a patent, is the real uncommon innovation. Which is why the above guy only got the idea 5 times. ;)
BTW, PCM Wav files compress very well in Zip format -- which is lossless. Of course, it is an extra step, but can be used for archiving old master WAV files. I usually batch several together and archive them on a DVD. As for pictures in JPEG. I use JPEG for most picture taking on my digital camera. If I really know I can get a good shot, I'll switch to RAW or TIFF -- just hate waiting the extra 40 seconds to record the image. If I plan to "work" with a JPEG image, I'll convert it to a lossless format then back to a JPEG. Minimizes the generational effects of working in JPEG. I have to work with the limitations of my camera. If my camera gave me the ability to save images in PNG I would take it, as long as it doesn't forever to save an image. Compact Flash is cheap these days. I can always buy more CF cards. For that matter, so are EIDE drives and DVD burners.
SPAM solution made easy: 1 spammer, 5 cords of rope, 5 hourses, and fireworks. Be creative.
Gee, in my real world expierience (30 years in this industry). I have found patents are actually the biggest bottleneck to innovation there is. The majority of innovations come from derivative works, not original ideas, that is a cold hard fact of life. I have seen some pretty cool technologies get canned because some litigous IP company patents some tiny piece of said product.
Bah.
Wavelet technology produces better compression ratios with greatly reduced human-visible artifacts than JPEG. These clowns might as well be tomorrow's buggy whip manufacturers.
If you haven't checked out wavelets, you're missing massive coolness. Edges between different tones are where our eyes get their best cues, and JPEG indiscriminately "blocks up" edges. Wavelets preserve edge information and do it well at compression ratios that JPEG uses to create low-rent Mondrian ripoffs.
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
Not only are they suing HP, Apple and Dell...but they're suing IBM. IBM. Now think about that for a minute. Why would anyone want to patent a with such an insanely large patent portfolio? It'll be interesting to see if IBM has anything they can use against them. On the other hand, it is nice to see companies that have been total asses (Adobe) getting sued. HAHA.