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Forgent Squeezing Money Out Of JPEG, Other Patents
deman1985 writes "Forbes reports that Forgent Networks, Inc., developer of scheduling software and holder of a number of technology patents, has settled with both Adobe and Sony for JPEG patent infringement and is going after numerous others to collect their fair share of royalties. The company also plans to go after PVR companies, including TiVo Inc, and MP3 player makers for other various patents they claim to hold. Sounds like more fun in the courts for everyone!" We previously reported on Forgent's JPEG patent shenanigans back in April.
Just when we thought it was safe to put colored pixels on the internet again...
"!"
They are putting a 1 cent per pixel toll on all JPEG images. All funds are directed towards global domination.
Should I not trust SourceForge then? That's kinda antithetical to typical /. ideology, as far as I'm concerned.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
That gives motivation to move on to JPEG-2000 and other superiour formats. Of course, those are patented as well already, so let's just get out a pencil and a piece of paper and forget the whole Internet thing...
;-)
Of course, someone will point me to pencil and paper patents now...
If you really want to get cool, make a html table with each cell one pixel of the image.. your image is now one big html file!
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Do you have any idea how much pr0n I have in jpeg?
Excluding the files that I have not checked or catagorized and stored in my repository, I have 103533 jpeg files (7704.57 MB) on my hard drive at the moment.
That's a lot of converting.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
You must have one very strong arm.
Changing every GIF to PNG on a site like Slashdot might have been easy even years ago when it was done, but some of us have quite a lot of important data stored in the JPEG format, which does not compress well with lossless PNG (e.g. anatomical photographs for scientific purposes). Just as an example:
It is not a simple matter of:
Well, actually it is, but it would take O(n) time (at least).
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I thought SCO patented extortion.
503 Sig Unavailable
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But wait; this uses a computer, so it's an entirely new concept... never mind.
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
"I believe this is just more proof that this David and Goliath story is just getting started," said Mannsbach, who said he holds close to 5 percent of Forgent's shares on behalf of clients.
This would be some kind of "American McGee's David Vs Goliath", with a David hooked on heroin and using his sling to tie off when he shoots up... it's definitely some looking-glass version of the story, 'cos I remember the original David being the hero, not an opportunistic parasite.
You're just not taking it seriously.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Bloody hell, I thought you were kidding until I did a search on the patent office website:
United States Patent 6,004,596For the record, it's 7:14AM right now
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
If these companies had been using proprietary software, nobody would have known what technologies they were using, so they wouldn't have been sued, would they?
<G/D/R>
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I love it. The irony is priceless. You do know you are linking to your photography site FULL of jpegs!! Better get out the checkbook!
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?