Slashdot Mirror
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."
I was in a hurry to get those corrections posted so I typed fast.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
They want their current (illegally issued, and thus currently illegal) patents to be legalized so they can use them for defensive purposes.
If there are no patents, there is no need for defensive patents.
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.
Rephrasing it: The current situation give a big competitive advantage for the Europe. MS is on a position of disadvantage, they only want to lower the playing field by making Europe as fuzzy as EUA.
Where the third point is also valid, I think the goal of MS supporting software patents on Europe is only fighting FOSS.
Rethinking email