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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.
Looks like we should have seen this coming a long time ago..._ not_free_patent
Published Thursday 18th July 2002 17:12 GMT
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/07/18/jpegs_are
oh and here are some more related articles
Some Google results
_JS
Jpeg is declared a lossey compression format in 2 ways now. 1) Image quality is degraded 2) your bank balance is degraded if you are sued for infringing on its patents
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.
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?
... Sony electronics was sued today over its use of 8-track tapes.
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?
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
PNG and JPEG are for very different purposes.
PNG is a lossless compression format, aiming at graphical images.
JPEG is a lossy compression format, aiming at photos.
It's like shortening by abbreviations vs. shortening by digesting. With abbreviations, you can restore the exact original, but your compression ratio is limited. With digesting you get much better compression while still getting the important facts, assuming the digester knows enough about the subject of the text he writes a digest on.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
That is trademarks
Patents do not require that you defend them.
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.
I thought that at least the slashdot readers would know the difference between copyrights, trademarks and patents by now.
Patents cover an idea. If it's patented, you can't do it. You can't black-box reverse engineer it. You can't get divine inspiration and get it out of the thin air. You just can't do something that's patented until the patent expires.
Copyrights cover a specific expression of an idea, like source code or prose or poetry. You can do the same thing, as long as you don't copy the original.
Trademarks cover a word/phrase associated with a company/brand. You're not allowed to make software and sell it under the name of Microsoft.
Trademarks are something you need to enforce. Patents and copyrights, on the other hand, can't be lost until they expire.
If you've known you had a case but did not bring suit and allowed your damages to mount, your suit is barred by the doctrine of laches. They would have a good argument based on this to either dismiss the suit or severely limit their damage award, assuming the validity of the patent, which I'm not.
Could someone (maybe a senator?) explain to me: if the entire purpose of patents is to promote innovation and provide an incentive to innovate then WTF does any new innovation require the inventor to spend 3 years to check that it doesnt infringe 10,000 patents? In the computer world things change on a weekly basis, can we _please_ make patents expire much much faster and stop all this stupid non-sense with people having ownership of ideas that play a totally obvious role in our lifes or where infact covered by another idea: case study: pop-up windows! dont make me fucking laugh this should have been thrown out of court within 30 seconds, one click shopping:
ME: Hi,
SHOPKEEPER: Hey Theo how can i help you?
ME: id like this and that please,
SHOPKEEPER: Certainly ill charge it to your tab?
now if you came into MY court with this patent mr amazon i would fucking get down from my stand and BEAT YOU WITH MY GAVEL! fuck you!
damit patents piss me off so much.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Maybe they might go after the end users SCO-style.
"How many JPEGs do I have on my hardrive?"
"Does it apply to MPEGs aswell?"
"Would a judge entertain a porn as free speech argument?"
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
...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.
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 |
Naaah, that's not the way to go. 1. Pollute the atmosphere as much as you can. 2. Create a portable breathing device that filters the atmosphere. 3. Have people pay for the service (subscription for beathing clean air), not the device ! 4. If the people fail to renew their subscription, lock up the device. They'll find one way or another to pay when they begin to stifle... 5. Profit !!! After all, it already worked for water. Why not do it with air ?
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
Nope, just the ones covered by their patents that can be upheld in a court.
With the rate bandwidth throughput is increasing, why not make png the standard? Then we can have lossless copies of our images.
When baud was 300, the difference between a JPG and BMP/PNG type was HUGE. Now the compression gains from the jpg standard is decreasing as bandwidth increases (i.e. the 0.01 seconds saved for downloading a jpg compared to a png is negligible.)
Go go png format!
s/video conferencing hardware/operating systems/
s/August 2001/August 2002/
s/Video Telecom, or VTel/Caldera/
s/Forgent/SCO/
s/a video technology firm/litigious bastards/
... can turn up some more information about this
This isn't new. It doesn't look like Microsoft was ever in talks with these people. I'd guess they didn't sue them because they didn't want to get their butt handed to them by a company that gives out 1.9 billion like candy.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
...is if you could design a method to arbitrarily reduce quality before PNG compression, in such a way that it becomes easily compressible. Kinda like the oh-so-much rumored wavelets that I've yet to see materialize.
I'm not sure how exactly PNG works, but I assume it has some "easy" and "hard" pixels to encode. If you accepted some loss to quality, for the bonus of getting lots of extra easy pixels, could you get near-JPG performance out of it?
Obviously, this would be a rather major job to do and I have no idea if the PNG compression algorithm is capable of such a thing (obviously it can compress anything, but will some "leverage" significantly improve compressability?), but would someone with some clue tell me if it is?
Basicly, instead of
Original -> JPG: discard info & encode rest (lossy)
Original -> discard info (lossy) -> PNG: encode (lossless)
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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
...to their website. here it is.
Yes, Gimp is in deep trouble. Rumor has it they'll have to fork over 50% of their profits.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
No, patents cover a process, not an idea. You can reverse-engineer all you like, but it is hardly necessary since patent protection requires a public disclosure of the patented process. What you cannot do is use the patented process without the permission of the patent holder during the lifetime of the patent -- yes, even if you invent the same process completely independently.
Now, if you can produce the same end product using a different process, you could be home free!
IANAL, but it is looking more and more like we should each become one...
@HbFyo0$k8 tH!$
After perusing the comp.compression faq for an overview of jpeg (see question [75]), I don't think this patent, even if valid, will affect JPEG as we know it. As the parent post points out, the patent covers compression via diff's between images. (This is, as I understand it, a major component of MPEG encoding, so I'm curious why they're not the ones getting sued.) JPEG, as your web browser uses it, likely doesn't use such a technique. From the FAQ:
The hierarchical mode represents an image at multiple resolutions. For example, one could provide 512x512, 1024x1024, and 2048x2048 versions of the image. The higher-resolution images are coded as differences from the next smaller image, and thus require many fewer bits than they would if stored independently. (However, the total number of bits will be greater than that needed to store just the highest-resolution frame in baseline form.) The individual frames in a hierarchical sequence can be coded progressively if desired. Hierarchical mode is not widely supported at present.
My take is that this "hierarchical mode" extension is the part covered by the patent. The problem is that, assuming the FAQ article is correct, most implementations of JPEG decoding we encounter won't support it, meaning most people aren't going to be encoding their JPEG's this way since it would be incompatible with mass-market JPEG implementations. It sounds more like something a company would use as part of a proprietary format built on JPEG.
Bottom line: don't expect this to have any ramifications for Mozilla, IE, etc.
I am a man of const int sorrows
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
A little clarification: PNG is actually a very nice substitute for JPEG's (especially the way JPEG's are currently being abused). It's single shortcoming in comparison to JPEG is that it does not compress to as small a size. JPEG is still a better choice for the web, for this reason, but PNG beats it hands down in other roles.
I've been working as a designer for over ten years (I started back when it used to require a degree, not just a computer). It's been my experience that JPEG is one of the most abused graphic file formats in general. It is good for the web...it's intended purpose...but it is awful for everything else. Unfortunately, everyone insists on using it for everything else...printing, digital cameras, stock art...all apparently blissfully unaware that this LOSSY algorithm is slowly but surely leeching the color data from their pictures every single time they save them. The result: Precious memories that print with muddy colors, photos with ugly artifacts in them, and unhappy designers who have to explain to their clients why there is no Photoshop cure for being a moron.
PNG's are great. They support multiple levels of alpha transparency, retain all their data, and compress even photos very well. They are a much better option for a multi-purpose format. (They would be even better if M$ would get off their collective asses and implement them properly in IE. Currently, IE treats them as if they have only one level of transparency)
JPEG's can still be smaller, at the expense of quality, but broadband may eventually make that moot. I fear we will all still be using JPEG's even then, though.
I've seen video games still using the PCX format, which is a crap format if ever their was one. Old formats die hard.
Do yourselves a favor: Use JPEG's on the web if you want, but archive your pictures with another format, like PNG, TIFF or Photoshop (PSD). CMYK images need to be saved as TIFF's or PSD's...ironically, the proprietary PSD is probably more universal.
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.
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.
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?
You can send in observations (under section 21 of the GB act, anyway) during the examination process. The examiner will then take your comments into account. This might be stuff like other patents, photocopies of a manual's pages, an article, or just an explanation of why you know it's obvious.
If you send him details of a pre-existing system that successfully shows that the invention he's dealing with is known/obvious, then it may prevent the patent being granted, or at least make the applicant significantly change the claims.
So if you pay attention to patents that are being published, then you can invalidate a patent for the price of a stamp.
---
"I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be."
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!
Strictly speaking, a WAV file can contain any of dozens of representations of the audio data, many of which are lossy compressions. The WAV format just defines the file structure. There is an entry in the header that specifies the audio data representation. Much of the time WAV files contain linear PCM data, which is uncompressed, but they don't have to. In fact, theres no reason in principle that a WAV file couldn't contain FLAC compressed data, though I believe that no FLAC identifier code has been registered.
The patent will actually expire on October 27, 2006 -- U.S. patents that were issued or pending as of June 1995 expire either 17 years from issuance or 20 years from earliest claimed priority date, whichever is longer.
Secondly, they are only entitled to damages for the 6 years preceeding the filing of the complaint (see e.e. 35 USC 286).
Thirdly, according to other stories and press releases, they did try to negotiate licensing agreements with these companies but couldn't reach an agreement. Patent lawsuits are expensive (2-5 million) and you try to license/settle and only resort to filing a lawsuit as last resort. Perhaps their motives were not so evil -- patentees typically don't want damages - they want royalties (easier to deal with and less costly to get) so maybe they just did everything they could to try and license/settle.
Finally, what is y'all obsession with submarine patents -- they don't exist anymore. If you have something since 1995 -- it is only entitled to a 20 year term from its first filing date/priority date. No reason to submarine anymore -- plus recent court decisions have applied a "unclean hands" type of rejection of lawsuits based on so-called submarine patents (see Lemelson's bar code patent fiasco in Nevada).
Just thought I should correct some of the erroneous assumptions.
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
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
In other news, the entire US Congress was found to have absolutely no clue as to the meaning of the words "The Congress shall have power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
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.
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.
http://www.algovision-luratech.de/company/news/pat entquarrel.jsp?OnlineShopId=1075701030541733420#4
(Remove the space after "...pat" - the slashdot formatter mangled the URL)
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.
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.