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."

Comments

My prediction....

[chrisopherpace]

My prediction is that this will turn into a patents war, since I know that MS at least has quite an arsenal stocked up....

Why?

[Future Man 3000]

I cannot for the life of me understand why companies choose to fight over patent-encumbered formats when unencumbered formats exist.

Microsoft could dump .JPG (and .GIF for that matter) in favor of .PNG and .MNG tomorrow without being the worse for it.

Re:Why?

[LiquidCoooled]

Would this effect usage in Internet explorer?
(Not that I care in that instance, but if MS backs off using it, then would FF also have to handle licensing it?)

Or is this simply image file creation thats at stake?

Re:Why?

[t_allardyce]

PNG/MNG use lossless compression which generally means they don't get as high compression ratios as JPEG. Not to mention that JPEG is pretty much standard on the web, how could microsoft just dump it? The way I see it this whole thing is ridiculous, I was taught JPEG (DCT, Huffman etc) at university, its practically up there with Fourier and basic maths, Forgent are just milking a decades old 'technology' and the poor cow is running dry.

Re:Why?

[Samari711]

It's not lack of time and patience on the part of the examiners so much as the fact that the USPTO uses the number of patents it grants to evaluate how well the office is performing. More patents granted means more revenue for the USPTO and the result is that the USPTO is one of very few government agencies that makes money. So really the USPTO has incentive to be liberal with their granting of patents and let the courts figure out which ones are really valid.

Probably the only solution that the USPTO would like would be to shift more of the cost of getting a patent to the application phase so that they don't have to wait till the patent is aproved to get income from it. Of course that would create a larger barier for smaller inventers but should make people think twice before filing nonsense patents and also would make it more likely for more scrutiny to be applied to each patent that does come though.

Patenting file formats?

[LiquidCoooled]

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?

Re:Patenting file formats?

[cduffy]

You can patent a compression algorithm. If a format specifies a particular compression algorithm... well, there you are.

Patenting a file format itself... well, it shouldn't be possible. but MS has done it, so in the US at least it demonstrably is.

Re:Patenting file formats?

[MilenCent]

So why was there so much furor over GIF not so long ago? It relied on a patented compression technique. That's only over because the patent finally expired.

I hate to once again echo the Slashdot party line on this, but software patents are just BAD.

Selling to Compaq

[MHobbit]

(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...

Just when does this patent expire?

[HidingMyName]

I thought patents were for 17 years, and this one appears to have been granted in 1987.

Re:Just when does this patent expire?

[Husgaard]

Yes, I believe just like the Mickey Mouse copyright extension.

Nonetheless the Mickey Mouse copyright extension was upheld by the US supreme court.

Re:This shows ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey fcuktard, Microsoft is the one trying to get Forgents JPEG patent nullified - not the other way around. It seems like Microsoft has been on the right side of quite a few patent issues recently and I cant remember the last time they were on the wrong side of one but all they take is shit from you idiots. If you want them to do the right thing then give props where theyre deserved. If the 800 lb gorilla is willing to do the world a service by freeing JPEG then they deserve congrats.

They lost the patent!!!

[LiquidCoooled]

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.

Ulterior motives

[metoc]

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.

Use It or Lose It

[gbulmash]

I'm not going to say patents or copyrights are bad. If you create a truly useful invention (be it artistic or technological), you should have the right to control it for a specified period of time and benefit from it. As other posters have noted, the GPL and other open source licenses are not anti-copyright, but are actually dependent on the concept of copyright for enforcement.

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

Re:Use It or Lose It

[dlamming]

You're wrong. Patents don't have to be defended, but trademarks do. If I own a patent, I can choose to enforce it against whomever I choose, whenever I choose (unless I've promised not to, hopefully in writing).

There's sort of an exception to this in case law: if I notify a patent holder that I might plan to use their patent, and they don't respond to me within three years, I can go ahead and use it with limited damages. I may still get sued for future damages once they notice I'm infringing, but I can't get retroactively sued for damages, and I probably won't prohibited from selling my product if I pay a suitable royalty.

Re:Use It or Lose It

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL, but AFAIK about patents, copyrights, and tradmarks, you have to actively defend your rights or you lose them.

As others have said, you do not need to defend a patent or copyright to prevent losing 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.

See above, and additionally, patents are public documents. The very premise of the system is that they are public documents. The notion that you would find a valuable one hidden in some filing cabinet is counter to the very notion of the US patent system, because a copy of that forgotten patent is readily available from the patent office. The patent office even has a text search for patents back to something like 1976, expanding backwards, and even greater search capabilities if you're willing to pay to support the continuously developing system.

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.

See above. I'm not trying to flame, but what ticks me off is the sheer number of people at Slashdot who are vehemently against a system about which they aren't informed.

But that would require common sense on the part of our politicians.

With all due respect, I don't think it's much to ask that we have at least a basic understanding of the system we're critiquing before we start accusing other people of lacking common sense. How much respect do you have for some nitwit who babbles about how bad linux sucks but doesn't have a clue what he's talking about? Well...

I've blown 5 mod points on this thread and this stuff still bubbles up. I'm not trying to flame, but this entire post is built on a misconception of how the system works. It's not interesting, it's inaccurate.

Re:If you live by the sword.

[Husgaard]

And here they are trying to have software patents enforced within Europe?

I think there are three reasons why Microsoft wants to have software patents legalized in Europe:

• They want it because they think it is their last possible way to fight their worst (and last remaining real) competitor: FOSS.
• They want their current (illegally issued, and thus currently illegal) patents to be legalized so they can use them for defensive purposes.
• They know that with about 50,000 illegally issued patents in Europe there will be a big patent war where everybody sues everybody in Europe if these illegal patents are legalized. This will give them (and the rest of the US software business) a big competitive advantage.

Perhaps not patent abuse, but they're pretty late

[Animaether]

Some may claim it's not abuse... I suppose it's ot

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.ht ml )

-----

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/ 12/0725217&tid=198
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)

"Defensive Patent" my a$$

[jettoblack]

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.

Re:They are patches.

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

I Have read every philosofical document on gnu.org, i have studied the GPL, i have even bringed rms to my country to talk on our local GLUG (http://www.shutdown.org.ar), thanx, i know what i'm talking about. RMS has said a million times that the GPL exists because of copyright law, to fix it. It's RMS desire, and i agree, that copyright woudln't exist at all, and that just laws would be correct, that is, many of the thing that the GPL states should be actually law for all software produced, and for other pieces of intelectual production, and so the GPL woudln't be needed. I Agree strongly with that, as utopic as it may sound.

Re:Just go to JPEG 2000

[Wesley Felter]

And then someone will whip out a patent which they claim applies to JPEG 2000.

It's getting to the point where you can only trust stuff that's over 21 years old.

Re:JPEG 2000? Where is it?

[Wesley Felter]

People will generally only move to an incompatible platform/protocol/file format if it is about 2X better than the old one. I've read that JPEG 2000 is only about 30% more efficient than JPEG.

Re:from TFA

[metricmusic]

Its the same microsoft that was calling for opening up the im protocol for interoperability but now that msn has dominant/close to market share they've gone all quiet about it.

They are no crusader, they only care about themselves.