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Forgent and Microsoft Sue Each Other Over JPEG
goombah99 writes "CNET reports that the long running Forgent JPEG patent claim story has a new turn. Forgent Networks has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging the software giant infringed on its digital-image compression patent that serves as the technology behind JPEG. The suit comes in response to a suit Microsoft filed last week, asking the courts to find Forgent's patent unenforceable. '... despite Microsoft's recent inquiries about licensing the patent, they chose to file a lawsuit, leaving us no alternative but to assert infringement claims against it,' stated Richard Snyder, chief executive of Forgent. U.S. patent No. 4,698,672, relates to video image compression and transmission specifically and compression in general. The underlying technology is an amalgam of Cosine Transforms, Huffman coding, and odd details. Major corporations are respecting Forgent's claims: to date Forgent has collected about 100 million dollars in payments from computer and camera companies for this patent settling on suits with 31 companies. Past slashdot stories here, here and here. How might this impact Longhorn? Forgent has shown interest in selling it (to Compaq) so it's not unthinkable Microsoft could just buy it and own it."
My prediction is that this will turn into a patents war, since I know that MS at least has quite an arsenal stocked up....
Bored? Why not join a decent mess
Microsoft could dump .JPG (and .GIF for that matter) in favor of .PNG and .MNG tomorrow without being the worse for it.
I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
-- W.C. Fields
First Burn Your GIFs post!
That they just have no concept of what ethics are, and have not such a think as a set of rules.
I'm agains Patents, and against copyright. There are many people out there that are pro-copyright. If it's the way they think, and are coherent about it, i just respect it, doesn't matter how much i disagree with them.
But in the case of Microsoft, it's not a belief. They only beleive that they have a right to rule the world, and would just do anything that could potentially benefit. If you ask me, i don't think that someone should be granted a patent, under any ocasion. But i also think, that in a world where patents exists, a patent for Jpeg is more logic than a patent for double click.
The RIAA is a piece of crap, but you don't see them using Kazaa, Microsoft goes against the same thing that they say.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
PNG is fine for LOSSLESS graphics, but JPEG is LOSSY. Only if you have tons of bandwidth would you be fine.
I think Forgent is playing a SCO tactic here; I have looked at the original patent and conclude that it is not patenting JPEG. In more detail, anything that JPEG uses which is detailed in this patent was discovered by somone besides the "inventor" of this patent.
Forgent doesn't have a leg to stand on; as soon as this case hits the court room, this bogus patent will be declared invalid. The JPEG's group response to this nonsense patent.
Okay. Thank you for answering my question, sir.
I thought you couldn't patent a format?
Is it the MS implimentation of saving the file that is at fault, or am I just wrong and the format itself is patented?
liqbase
A lawsuit? Stupid. Microsoft should employ the same technique I use at BestBuy. Just purchase the license, use it for a while, and then return it claiming that the salesman scratched it.
(to Compaq)
If Forgent was going to sell it to Compaq, wouldn't it just be selling it to HP? Or have I been incorrectly thinking all along about HP buying Compaq, when in fact HP only bought the computer portion of Compaq? I'll go Google for more info...
Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
I thought patents were for 17 years, and this one appears to have been granted in 1987.
The great thing about all this is that you can just imagine both Forgent and Microsofts lawyers and PHB's in court, neither having any idea what a discrete cosine transform is or how huffman works, sitting their yawning and listening to engineer testimonies while the judge tries to figure what the fuck is going on.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Our goal is to have NO COPYRIGHT AT ALL, until then, the GPL is a hack that uses this same fucked up law against itself. One day, copyright won't exist, and since noone will be able to put restrictions on software and other stuff, the GPL won't be needed.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
And now the same is happening to JPEG.
What do you think is needed to avoid such 'submarine' patent attacks on established standards?
At least the little guy has nothing to worry about. We're obviously not worth enough money to sue.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
The patent was filed in 1987.
A patent lasts 17 years so the patent is now expired.
Does anyone have a copy of the actual lawsuit?
Why does the phrase "sue each other" give me flashbacks to that comic, Spy vs. Spy?
Yes, dear mods, the grand question of "penis" IS overrated.
Let us have a revolution to overthrow the evil reign of the Penisites!
The obligatory quote from Shakespeare's Henry VI is apt in the face of the insanely, litigious state of Corporate culture. "...kill all the lawyers.", and the system fails. The path seems to be grab whatever you can, lay claim via the USPTO, who seem ready to oblige. Then litigate and hold out for a buyout. SCO seems to be run by idiots, as they appear to be failing where all others succeed.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Microsoft Gross Profit: 30.12 Billion Forgent Networks Gross Profit: 3.30 Million I wonder who will win...
Portland, North Dakota Puppies
And here they are trying to have software patents enforced within Europe? What is it that Homer says? Doh!
Deleted
(Hoping for "underrated" or "insightful" mod, because "Penis?" was overrated)
And while there at it they can patent the Huffman Run Length Encoder. Oops, did I just give away the basis of the JPEG compression technique.
Mutually Assured Destruction.
If the both patents are enforced, neither will make anything. Just loose money to the lawyers. I'm curious, is the bar association one of the groups lobbying for patents?
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
If Microsoft loses this lawsuit, would they finally have to make IE do PNG's correctly?
The fact that Microsoft is pursuing an expensive legal remedy instead of adopting or developing an alternative to JPEG indicates that it takes an immense amount of money to develop, establish, and market something as wonderful as the JPEG. However, on the other hand, it may just be that JPEG has become so pervasive that Microsoft has no choice but to support it, and in that case it does seem unfair that a company can continue to harvest so much money, just because they've created a certain degree of consumer dependency. Almost like a twisted kind of monopoly.
I just been digging through the USPTO records about this patent (its intruiging in a sadistic way), and I discovered that the physical patent file itself went missing!
05-22-2002 File Marked Found
02-25-2002 File Marked Lost
09-21-2001 Set Application Status
10-06-1987 Recordation of Patent Grant Mailed
07-13-1987 Issue Fee Payment Verified
Heres the link to the info block for the patent.
I was originally looking for expiry information for this patent, but couldn't seem to find it.
liqbase
DCTs suck anyway. If this makes people adopt wavelet compression sooner, all the better.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
In this case the patent is mainly about compression and transmission of video. So its the combination of things not just the Cosine Transform.
However a close reading of the patent claims shows that it also contains technology useful for still compression like jpeg. The fact that this is buried in the complex details may account for why it took so long for the assignee of the patent to get around to claiming it.
The interesting thing here is that Forgent is willing to sel the patent. It already tried to sell the patent to Compaq. So in theory microsoft could pull a coup here not by breaking the patent but by purchasing it and thereby owning Jpeg. The fact that it already produces a revenue stream sort of underlies that. I also know that I the mpeg compression algorithm may also be based on Fast Cosine Transforms. THere is weaker chance it could be used to claim ownership of mpeg.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I suspect M$ has ulterior motives. M$ has licensed stuff (i.e. LZW/GIF) before and has the cash, so why take the risk of losing in court and making a big payout.
So why else?
One. The patent is truly unenforceable, and M$ is confident it can prove it in court.
Two. They want to set a precedent. If you fail to enforce a patent, and it (accidently) ends up in a standard that becomes pervasive. You can't be johnny come lately and start enforce it. Obviously if people knew the patent existed, they wouldn't have used it in JPEG, or companies like M$ would have only used JPEG if they were willing to pay the royalties. Additionally Forgent is charging royalties as if nobody has a choice (which they don't have now). If they had enforced the patent and asked for royalties 10-15 years ago it would be in limited use and no where near as valuable.
But this isn't about the GPL.
IANAL, but AFAIK about patents, copyrights, and tradmarks, you have to actively defend your rights or you lose them. That's why when these companies discover a patent in the back of some filing cabinet they bought at a bankruptcy auction, they immediately sue 500 infringers. It's not just for the money, but to establish that they are actively defending it.
What ticks me off is that someone who owns a patent, copyright, or tradmark can let it be trod upon, made part of universal standards, and essentially give up all rights to it. Then they go bankrupt, retire, get bought out, and a new party acquires their portfolio. That new party then runs out and sues everyone using this IP.
In cases like this, where the IP has been widely used, has become a standard, and no one has enforced the copyright/trademark/patent for over a decade, the patent should be declared null and void. A new owner shouldn't be able to crawl out from under a rock and start suing people.
But that would require common sense on the part of our politicians. And as we all know, few of them have any sense and the only time the word "common" is applied to them is when someone's calling them "common crooks."
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
I was in a hurry to get those corrections posted so I typed fast.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
What's wrong with the way IE handles PNG now?
Hmmm... this might have more basis than SCO. With people like Apple and Sony and camera manufacturere paying up it gains a lot of credibility. On the other hand this is pretty alarming. As potentially bad as the EOLAS patent for the web. What could replace JPEG. Certainly not PNG, GIF or TiFF. is there another easily high comresssion open standard for photos
In other words, more "sounds good, feels good" slashdot advice. The lawyers are just the middle-men in this whole battle. The companies, and individuals are the ones paying their salary. Killing all the lawyers would no more solve the problem than "stop all the drugs" will solve the drug problem. Trace the circle around, and you find that WE are the reason WE are in this mess. For everyone who gave up and said "I'm too weak". For everyone who remained silent. For everyone who didn't vote. For everyone between now and then. No mercy here, for now's the time to lay in the bed of your own making. Kill all the lawyers you want. Invade all the countries you want. The easy solution will never give you the peace you desire, and it will give you and your legacy nightmares for decades to come. Just look at the Middle East, for were the wrong solution and "eye for an eye" (easy solution) didn't work.
bla, bla
Sony and Apple are little guys?
Okay so you say a patent-free standard will emerge. But what if Microsoft were enjoined from using JPEG as a result of the suit. So would they delay Longhorn till a new web standard emerged. Not likely I agree. But also hard to figure out the alternative if mcirsoft loses this suit. If the suit drags on Forgent would be likely to get an injunction. Shutting any one company out of Jpeg (say cannon or sony) would matter to the internet. But microsoft is the one company where this could cause havoc on the web.
Some may claim it's not abuse... I suppose it's ot
t ml )
/ 12/0725217&tid=198
Some claim it was a submarine patent... well no, it wasn't. (Look up the definition of a submarine patent first)
However...
- Their patent was issued in October 1987
- Their patent went unenforced until July 2002
That's a 15 year gap.
I know that unlike trademarks, patents need not be enforced. But that's a change I would gladly see made.
So somebody asked what we can do to avoid these things. Unfortunately, as long as patents exist, I don't think we can avoid them.
What we -can- do is decide better how to deal with them.
I'm not one for completely ignoring patents altogether - they have their good uses, even in software.
But in cases such as these, I think that if a patent hasn't been enforced over a certain technology for over N years (I suggest 3), then I think the patent holder should be barred from making any claims to patent infringement.
I'm sure there's plenty of loopholes and problems with this, but the basic principle would be
- you still get to patent stuff
- people still need to respect that patent. So if you make a product and your patent search results in a hit, you still have to license the patent (if applicable)
- you still get to hold those who, somehow, missed your patent accountable for it within an N-year timeframe
- those who somehow missed your patent, and you somehow miss their technology or the realization that it infringes on your patent, for > N years won't suddenly be met with a patent lawsuit
-- which means that any invention that got wildly popular can't suddenly be milked for all its worth because a bunch of suits managed to twist patent interpretations enough to make it applicable to that invention
-- small companies won't be sued out of existance just for missing a patent > N years ago
-----
As for another user's question... what are open (lossy compression) alternatives ? There's plenty of 'open' alternatives. Problem is that there's a patent of some form behind every single one that I'm aware of. The JPEG thing, JPEG2000, Wavelets, Gradient Tesselation, Fractal..
I'm not sure if BTPC actually has any patents associated with it. However, the author claims not.
( http://www.intuac.com/userport/john/btpc5/index.h
-----
Finally.. I wonder what all this Forgent stuff will do, if anything, to the StuffIt guys; http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01
As they use, at least partially, a different compression (to get even smaller files).
If all this Forgent stuff doesn't apply to them, and Forgent gets to keep the patent business going, the Stuffit format may prove to be attractive to some companies as it would require minimal change in code/etc. (at least when compared to a completely different format)
As someone who has patents on laser radar methods that are about to expire. I can say I have no idea if people are using my techinuqes in their product or not. How in the hell would I be able to find out. I could not even afford to buy one of the many lidar instruments on the market and check. Even if I could, it would be hard to tell if it was or was not in use. It would be like trying to see if a certain patented math algorithm were encoded inside a computer chip in hardware. So I wait hoping that maybe at the last second I see a paper or something that mentions that someone is using the methods. But discovering your patent is being abused is serendiptous. Thus if you believe in patents then you need to put most of the burden on the people who use methods without checking for patents on them. This is of course an almost equally difficult task. The better solution might be higher thresholds for patent claims.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
IIRC, the original owner of this patent really did create the JPEG format (or at least came up with the basics involved) but they filed this patent defensively, just so someone couldn't come along later and do this. But when Forgent bought the patent, they decided not to keep its defensive stance.
IMHO, public remarks about a patent being defensive-only should be enforced strictly, that is, put a comment in the patent record that definitively marks this patent as defensive-only and not eligible for actively suing anyone, and which cannot be removed for the entire life of the patent or any extensions based on it.
from Longhorn to Longtime
So after getting stuck in litigation for 3 more years they'll still be able to extort money from everyone!
Tharkban (It is a signature after all)
Ah yes, yet another patent-based racketeering scam.
The USPTO should be prosecuted under RICO.
Abolishing copyright laws only solve part of the problem. The other part is laws protecting our rights to modify and redistribute information.
Luke-Jr
I just finished converting all my GIFs to JPEGs, since they told me GIFs were evil. Now they tell me GIFs aren't evil and JPEGs are! My web pages are going to look awful with all that lossy conversion.
I've obviously been living in a barrel for the last umpteen years. I simply hadn't been aware that jpeg was a proprietary format until I saw this article. Bummer. I sure hope that doesn't mean my digital camera will suddenly stop working with the Gimp. ;-)
This may explain Microsoft's decision to further support PNG format in the Internet Explorer 7 Beta.
My little Linux and tech blog
""(Forgent) is subverting the JPEG standard to extract millions of dollars in unwarranted profits," Microsoft's lawsuit states."
Sounds like Microsoft is against the use of IP laws as bludgeoning instruments to make up for lack of competitiveness in the marketplace.
Shoe, meet the other foot. It will be very interesting to see how this develops. Can you picture MS as a crusader against IP abuse?
Me neither.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
I understand the Score:Funny moderation of the parent because the image of two teams of lawyers heatedly debating something about which they are all entirely clueless definitely *IS* funny.
However, in reality, this is what is happening today in hundreds or thousands of subject areas, and the end result is nothing short of terrifying: a whole nation's progress is at the mercy of clueless talkers, instead of the do'ers of society.
It doesn't take a genius to realize that this can't be good for the country's future.
...mod parent UP!
Repeat: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A DEFENSIVE PATENT!
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
I guess two wrongs do make a right.
MOUNT TAPE U1439 ON B3, NO RING
Question: Why aren't we seeing widespread use of the superior JPEG 2000 codec in software and digital cameras?
Download Opera 9 (in the BETA forum)
But will they be marketing it as the "Mi Ruv Yoo" edition in Asian markets?
Slashdot requires you to wait longer between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.
Well, you DID get an underrated there. I think we have discovered the "Yin-yang" prinicple of Slashdot. This calls for celebration!
I thought patents only lasted for 17 years.
Hasn't it been 18, and 17 for the mp3 patent?
MNG is dead. Forget it. IT'S GONE.
Hell, what little support Mozilla had was dropped a long time ago.
As far as jpeg vs PNG it's like saying that OGG or MP3's are pointless now that we have Flac or that monkey codec thingi.
PNG is Lossless. Jpeg is lossy.
Lossy equals HUGE space and bandwidth savings. You can have nice jpegs that looks to the end user just as nice as PNG images, but are a fraction of the size.
You use PNG for several purposes...
1. Archive images,
2. Use them in workflow, they are nicer then Tiff's because their are hundreds of 'Tiff' variations (some tiffs are lossy, some are lossless, some are compressed, some are not, adobe has their own tiff format etc etc etc etc). That makes life difficult for programmers.
But either way you can't use Jpegs, you use Tiff or PNG.
3. Small web images, buttons, widgets and images that require transparency to integrate them nicely.
PNG is not a replacement for Jpeg. It was never ment to be a replacement, it's not designed to be a replacement, and it's never going to be a replacement.. at least as long as you pay for your bandwidth and disk space in your websites or have limited disk space on small devices.
PNG is a replacement for Giff, which it is VERY good at. It can do everything that Giffs can do, and do it better, and giffs can't come close to PNG images. It's also a lossless and compressed format, which most versions of tiffs are not.
It sounds like you would deny this man his Consitutional right to a patent.
Inventors do not have a constitutional right to get patents. Congress has only a constitutional power to grant patents to inventors. The way the copyright and patent clause is written implies that copyright and patent monopolies are a privilege, not a right on par with freedom of speech.
I used to have a lecturer, Dr Daughman (he patented an iris recognition algorithm) who was crazy about .. that worked out to be easy to encode. But I found out that it worked very poorly, at least for the images I tried it on... the reason is that wavelet based algorithms do not do well on images with expanses of constant color (i.e. normal images). Any feature in the image requires wavelets which require, in turn, lots of other wavelets to cancel out the first wavelets' effect. ... and blank squares can be compressed very easily.
wavelets. So I tried implementing a wavelet based compression technique. It was based on a quadratic wavelet with limited extent
Basically, at higher compression ratios you see compression artifacts (ripples) all over the image and at all scales. At least with DCTs on small regions you only see the artifacts in the little squares
where the features reside
Dan Povey
You DO realize that the GPL and other Free licenses DEPEND on copyright in order to have any standing, right?
If you're referring to copyleft, which uses copyright to require a work to be distributed in a form suitable for modification, then consider that without copyright, everybody would have the right to make and distribute commented decompilations of computer programs that were distributed in executable form.
I can't say that I like Microsoft or their products. Ok... I have no repsect for the quality of their products what so ever. Well software generally. Hardware, I'm alot more forgiving.
In this situation Microsoft has my complete support. I hope they drive that other company that no one ever heard of before this out of business.
thus most patents are not aimed at enriching the inventor gratuitously but creating a value that protects further investment in the patent. This is the classic public good argument that privatization of public property is often in the public good.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Oh well, if microsoft has to license JPEG, all they will need to do is raise the price of each copy of windows. Oh No.
It is taken out of context, and most people aren't getting the right joke. But it is a joke.
Yes it is true that the speaker is Dick the Butcher, an evil villian, and his intentions by that statement are not good intentions. But Dick the Butcher has alot of dialoge in the play that comes out funny. Here is the particular quote.
JACK CADE: I thank you, good people:- there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.
DICK: The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
JACK CADE: Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled o'er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings: but I say, 'tis the bee's wax; for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since.- How now! who's there?
This dialogue is obviously meant to be funny. Also, Shakespeare abuses lawyers (more obviously) in several other plays too. I leave it to you to find them.
Funny enough if you google this up on the Internet you can find many, many lawyers with long drawn out arguments as to why Shakespeare is showing lawyers as the bastion of freedom and justice that prevents anarchy. (That is what Dick would think, but not the audience!) This is ofcourse all bullocks, and anyone can easily figure it out by reading the damn thing. If you don't find Dick the Butcher funny, then I guess you don't get that kind of humor.
Defensive patents can exist in a way. In the UK you can place an entry on the Patents Register that licenses are available as of right. These "licenses of right" allow any interested party to get a license on reaosnable terms as a bonus the owner of the patent gets a 50% cut in renewal fees. See Section 46 of the UK patents Act 1977.
"In case you haven't noticed, software patents in their current form SUCK. Hard."
You'd think that geeks like things that SUCK HARD. How do you think Hoover stays in business?
Your experiment notwithstanding, I'm pretty impressed by JPEG 2000. Any compression scheme is going to fall apart in some way when the data become too sparse,
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Do'h! Accidentally hit the submit button too soon.
Your experiments notwithstanding, I've been very impressed by the performance of JPEG2000 on quite a wide variety of images. Have you tried running the test images on which your code performed poorly through the JP2 reference encoder?
Any compression scheme is going to fall apart when pushed to extremes, but I contend that JP2 performs far better than the DCT approach at identical bit/pixel rates. Add to that, the fact that JP2 files are effectively uncoupled from the resolution of the original image (you can decode to whatever dimensions you want), and I'd have to say that the benefits are compelling.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
1. Enter negotiations with Forgent for jpg licensing.
2. MS figures out that Forgent's pattent might be shit. but if it isn't it wants to buy it not license it.
3. MS sues Forgent making sure they lose and the patent is enforced.
4. MS buys Forget and owns JPEG.
Brilliant!
...die by the sword.
In the words of the famous Comedy Central comedian to CNN Crossfire:
"Stop. Please stop. You are hurting America."
That means the two idiots out there suing each other over patents and aiming to hurt everyone, stop. Yeah, I mean you Forgent and Microsoft.
BTW, in case either of you been living in the stone age, JPEG is considered a _standard_. Unisys is on my blacklist of businesses to not do business with for the next 10 years for their super-putzing retardedness with LZW (used in GIF). Remember "Burn-all-GIFs" day when Unisys decided to enforce its patent after GIF had already become the web standard? "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Welcome to the past Forgent and your new future.
Oh, BTW, Forgent, if you win your lawsuit, I'll personally call you up and introduce you to my 10 year post-patent blacklist of companies to not do business with for super-putzing. You, Sony, and Unisys will be on it. Both Sony and Unisys have lost big customers due to my influence. Good luck with that lawsuit!
An algorithm exists in nature from the birth of the universe. Humans never 'invent' an algorithm, they merely 'discover' it. So an algorithm is actually a physical resource, much like water. Since natural resources can not be patented, why should algorithms be patented? this whole 'algorithm-patenting' thing holds software development back.
This isn't standard, but i can give you this algorithm gratis, you have to put a file format on it to use it, and implement it in real code. JPEG is a bit more complex, and will give better image quality, but this is simple and definitely patent free since Fourier is dead since a hundred years or more.
comress_image(image, factor) begin
red_freq_comps = fft_2d(image.red)
green_freq_comps = fft_2d(image.green)
blue_freq_comps = fft_2d(image.blue)
red_comp_comps = throw_away_high_comps(red_freq_comps, factor)
green_comp_comps = throw_away_high_comps(green_freq_comps, factor)
blue_comp_comps = throw_away_high_comps(blue_freq_comps, factor)
return red_comp_comps, green_comp_comps, blue_comp_comps
end
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
Here's a question: What happens if a patent like this is discovered to be bogus?
Surely all those companies who have shelled out $bignum to licence it would have the right to sue, for hasn't that money been extorted under false pretenses?
While this issue is not all that clear cut, how about the many cases where the patent holder is obvioulsy aware that their patent is bad?
I think the real reason why MS won't settle and ask for a licence is because the patent expires shortly anyway (2007 if it's a 20 year patent). They probably don't see the need to fork out millions when in 2 years time they can do what they like with the technology.
By suing, they keep their licence money and their "Don't sue us or we'll take you down" image.
Except that JPEG 2000 is already under patent threat from a bunch called LizardTech... http://www.ermapper.com/company/news_view.aspx?PRE SS_RELEASE_ID=356
I bet those guys will have more business than they can handle for the for the forseeable future. BSF has made $31MM on the scox, and BSF hasn't done a damn thing. Easiest money in the world.
Cross Licensing Agreement
After all Patents don't really destroy, they just cost money. At a certain point it's cheaper to just agree to share and move on. Assuming companies are run by rational people.