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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
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.
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.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
(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.
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Go canucks, habs, and sens!
The patent was filed in 1987.
A patent lasts 17 years so the patent is now expired.
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.
Microsoft Gross Profit: 30.12 Billion Forgent Networks Gross Profit: 3.30 Million I wonder who will win...
Portland, North Dakota Puppies
We'd all be better if O'Reilly had never published any books.
The Farewell Tour II
If Microsoft loses this lawsuit, would they finally have to make IE do PNG's correctly?
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
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
As far as I know, there aren't any patent free replacements for JPEG currently available. If this situation turns into something similar to the GIF situation, there will be one.
Remember, there was no PNG either until the GIF patents came to light, or OGG Vorbis until the MP3 patent problems started.
Compression is a patent minefield however, as the MP3, GIF, and now JPG situations show. You do your best to not use patented alogrithms, but a few years down the road someone finds some obscure patent they say applies. Vorbis and PNG might still run into this trouble, as might any other piece of software in the current climate.
In case you haven't noticed, software patents in their current form SUCK. Hard.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
Some may claim it's not abuse... I suppose it's ot
t ml )
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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
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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
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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.
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.
""(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.
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.
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.
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.