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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."
Microsoft could dump .JPG (and .GIF for that matter) in favor of .PNG and .MNG tomorrow without being the worse for it.
Yes, and then everyone's digital cameras which compress pictures using JPEG can magically update their firmware to compress pictures using PNG.
Hopefully, that will be a good thing.
If there is a big enough high profile case that displays the stupidity behind such patents, the USPTO may actually be forced to reconsider the way it handles patents.
Imagine - a big case that brings in all the big fellas into the picture fighting over something the judge rules to be too trivial or too basic.
Aww, who am I kidding. I should lay off the crack.
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.
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.