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JPEG Patent Could Impact The Gimp

Posted by timothy on from the notacon-falls-silent dept.

SeanAhern writes "A number of years ago, Forgent acquired a patent on some of the algorithms required for JPEG compression and decompression, and recently sued 31 big-name IHVs and ISVs. A Newsforge article gets into some of the details and asks whether open source tools like the Gimp could be liable as well. To add fuel to the fire, the Joint Photographic Experts Group's committee thinks that some of the patent may be invalid. The p2pnet.net story mentions that the FTC has some skepticism as well. We originally talked about this on Slashdot back in the summer of 2002."

4 of 301 comments (clear)

  1. Oh come on.. stop worrying already. by k98sven · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Number one: Noone seems to think this patent is applicable, we've been over this already. The JPEG group says (in diplomatic terms) that they have prior art.

    Number two: What is to be gained by going after the Gimp? Want to becoming the next SCO? Only there is even less money in the Gimp than in Linux.

    1. Re:Oh come on.. stop worrying already. by metlin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Number two: What is to be gained by going after the Gimp? Want to becoming the next SCO? Only there is even less money in the Gimp than in Linux.

      Nothing. Except that this would set a VERY bad precedent.

      People will start suing works that are OpenSource all over the place citing some vague-o patents that they may not even have claims to, and kill such projects.

      If a conglomerate of litigation happy powerful companies got together, they can cause quite a harm, and fuck things up.

      Its not the fact that they are targeting Gimp *in particular* thats wrong - its the fact that they are targeting anybody at all (okay, anybody OpenSource).

  2. Re:Personally... by S.Lemmon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To all the other dittoheads saying "just use PNG", please learn something or two about the format before you push it.

    Sure it's open source, and that's great, but it was never intended as JPEG replacement! JPEG is a lossy compression and can reduce the size of a photographic image much further than a lossless compression - that's why it was invented to begin with. PNG is intended as a GIF replacement for images like drawings and diagrams that have large areas of the exact same color.

    You might as well say to use TIFF as use PNG - both will store high color images with perfect quality, but they'll be huge compared to JPEG. Bandwidth ain't free folks - having images ten times their previous size can sink a busy website. Now, finally some may say "but PNG supports lossy compression too" - yep, it's sure does - by using JPEG compression!

  3. Re:This is a very bad trend by Dark+Lord+Seth · · Score: 5, Insightful
    And jackasses like this want a piece of the pie? What about the good old days when knowledge belonged to the world, and people put out their works for everyone else to use?

    Welcome to 2004.

    Knowledge today is nothing more then a simple object of value. Patents, IP, and the whole are used as sleeper agents lately. You patent something extremely broad today and in 10 years, you fuck up everyone by sueing people left and right. That's normal these days and basically not much to worry about. After all, the big companies in IT at the moment got in their current position by other means. Google by sheer usefulness, IBM by overpowering all mainframe competition over time, Microsoft by succesfully ripping of good ideas, etc. If you look at the Fortune 500 list, who in that list made and kept his fortune by starting silly lawsuits? ( lawyers dont start lawsuits, they just porfit from them. Immensely. )

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